We may have to relabel our Astounding Science Fact from last week as a Tale of the Paranormal. LiveScience observes that the “news” reporting for this story is a bit on the shoddy side (to say the least) and there’s no good reason to believe that a spider bite can cure paralysis. Everybody got that? […]
The first entire replacement human organ to be grown from stem cells in a mature host will be… A heart? A liver? A pancreas? Nope. Chances are, it will be a tooth: Regenerating a whole tooth is no less complicated than rebuilding a whole heart, says Songtao Shi of the University of Southern California, who […]
HIV is a uniquely clever virus. It constantly mutates to elude the body’s defenses – and our medical intervention. But in order to work at all, some part of the HIV virus has to remain unchangeable. Dr. Paul and Dr. Miguel Escobar in Houston believe that they’ve found that part of the virus. AND they […]
The UK Telegraph is reporting a big step forward for cancer “immunotherapy:” A cancer patient has made a full recovery after being injected with billions of his own immune cells in the first case of its kind, doctors have disclosed. They’re being careful not to say the man was cured, but its a remarkable recovery […]
This is Fuji the dolphin. Fuji lost her tail due to cancer. After two failed attempts, Bridgestone Tire Company was able to come up with this silicon rubber tail. Fuji accepted it and can swim almost as well as before. She lives in Okinawa. And here’s CBS video coverage. Fuji is not the only animal […]
Breakthroughs in regenerative medicine have received quite a bit of attention on the web recently, with this particular story making the rounds several times. We linked to it back in March after 60 Minutes did a piece on it, although then (and today) our emphasis is more on Wake Forest University’s efforts to grow human […]
UPDATE: Instalanche! Thanks for the links, Glenn, both here and on the new Better All the Time, which features a roundup of good news related to that most irreplaceable of parts — the human brain. This really got my attention: In his lab at Wake Forest University, a lab he calls a medical factory, Dr. […]
No, we’re not quite there, yet. But it looks like we’re much closer than we were: SCIENTISTS have created a beating heart in the laboratory in a breakthrough that could allow doctors one day to make a range of organs for transplant almost from scratch. The procedure involved stripping all the existing cells from a […]
Next time Stephen packs up his family for one of those all-nighter cross-country excursions, maybe he will benefit from this development: As the line between science fiction and reality becomes increasingly blurry, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has always led the pack in terms of cool, weird, wacky and frightening innovations. This time […]
On Sunday I told the FastForward Radio audience that I had a cold. I was sure I was going to go into a coughing fit during the show. The show went fine but this cold got worse over the next couple of days. Today’s Wednesday and I’m thankful to be feeling better, but the last […]