R.I.P. Scout26
A few pig cells, a single surgery and a rigorous daily workout: They’re the three ingredients that patients will need to re-grow fresh, functional slabs of their own muscle, courtesy of Pentagon-backed science that’s already being used to rebuild parts of people.The research team behind the project, based out of the University of Pittsburgh, has made remarkably swift progress: Mere months after starting their first-ever clinical trial, they’ve already operated on four soldiers and are now training groups of surgeons from across the country in perfecting the approach. If progress continues at this pace, the trial will wrap in 24 months and the technique will become “a standard of care for orthopedists and trauma surgeons,” according to Dr. Stephen Badylak, head of the initiative....Marine Corporal Isaias Hernandez, a U.S. soldier who served as Badylak’s veritable guinea pig in 2008, after he returned from deployment missing 70 percent of his right quadriceps, the procedure is no doubt poised to transform medicine.“I’ve been losing weight and playing sports,” Hernandez said earlier this year, adding that he expected to re-enlist and deploy again. “It feels pretty good.”
Cool, now I could have be bacon at all times.
Does this only apply as regenerative medicine? Or can we use this as elective medicine for making people stronger than they'd naturally be? Or some really cool body mods?
