One American stuck his finger in the powder…
PREFACE:
at the time of writing this article, we were sure that this story with a severed finger was complete nonsense.
But they were conscientiously mistaken, which they wrote about three years later in the afterword.
For almost a month, since May 1, 2008, the world's media – from the tabloid The Sun to the quite serious Telegraph and Guardian, and after them, and everyone who is not lazy – have been retelling in different ways the story of a "medical miracle" – a finger chopped off and re-grown with the help of a "magic powder" made from pork bladder.
To make it more convincing, most publications on the topic "How an American grew a severed finger" are provided with photos of the injured finger "before" (do not look at the faint of heart!) and "after".
In short, 69-year-old hobby store seller Lee Spievack (Lee Spievack) from Cincinnati (Ohio), a propeller from an airplane model was chopped off one and a half centimeters (no, two! no, a whole inch!) of the finger on the hand (although it is clearly visible in the picture that not two or one and a half centimeters are cut off here, and even more so not the entire finger, which the headlines shout about, but its very tip). The doctors who examined the damage said that "nothing can be done about it." But the poor guy's brother, Alan, who is engaged in regenerative medicine in the laboratory of the University of Pittsburgh, sent him a magic powder developed by Acell. Four weeks later, sprinkled with powder (whether a couple of times during the whole time, or three times a day for a month, it is unclear), the finger looked quite normal, apart from the coarseness and a small scar on the pad.
Acell claims that the pig bladder extract included in the powder has already proven its effectiveness in the treatment of ulcers and other injuries, as well as in the restoration of cartilage. According to the company's scientific expert, Dr. Stephen Badylak from the University of Pittsburgh, the powder does not contain pig cells and consists mainly of collagen and other animal compounds that form microscopic scaffolds and release chemical signals that ensure tissue regeneration. The mechanisms of action of the miraculous remedy are not fully known, but the company plans to test it on people who have lost fingers, and even on a certain patient from Buenos Aires, who will have surgery to remove the part of the esophagus affected by the tumor. And the military just beat with horseshoes in anticipation of the opportunity to grow all the lost organs to the crippled soldiers – just sprinkle with powder!
Although it is possible to understand that nothing shines for the disabled here, even from an illiterate presentation of the procedure for obtaining a magic wound healer: "During experiments, researchers scrape cells from the inner shell of the pig's bladder, place the shell in acid, dry it and then store it in the form of plates or powder."
It is not difficult to guess that there is no bladder extract in the powder and the extracellular matrix is meant. It consists of pure collagen and by itself does not contribute to tissue regeneration at all.
The most wonderful thing about this story is that it happened in 2005. After that, either because of poor memory, or because of the lack of something more fried and hot, the media twice exaggerated it as news: in February 2007 and a year later, in February 2008. Her last reincarnation was announced by BBC Television News on April 31, 2008 and at 10 p.m. on the same day was completely defeated by Professor Simon Kay from the University of Leeds in The World Tonight program. Some (very few) of the media, who managed to duplicate a not-so-fresh and yellow-smelling sensation the next day, even published its refutation. The rest continue to reprint this story until now.
Dr. Kay's report is called briefly and simply: Regrown finger is 'junk science'. I.e., "A grown finger is a 'junk science'".
Kay, a consulting plastic surgeon specializing in hand operations, after studying the photographs, said that the degree of damage in the press was unreasonably inflated. One and a half centimeters is half of the phalanx, including the entire nail together with the cells capable of growth at the base of the nail plate (measure yourself if in doubt). The picture shows that the owner of the finger lost some skin, muscle tissue and part of the nail, without damaging the bone of the first phalanx. In addition, the unique ability of the fingertips (even in adults) to regenerate has long been known to practitioners. At the same time, for better recovery, the simplest bandage should be applied to the damaged finger, since suturing prevents the normal regeneration process.
Kay also notes that there is no evidence that Acell's product (whatever they add to collagen) stimulates the body's ability to regenerate. Such a Nobel achievement could not go unnoticed, but a "miracle" happened in 2005, and even if the drug was at the initial stages of development at that time, publications in serious scientific journals and conference abstracts should have appeared in 3 years.
Certain thoughts are also suggested by the fact that images similar to those published in May 2008 are included in a lecture on regenerative medicine dated 2006.
So the next sensation turned out to be literally sucked out of the finger.
A healthy skeptic
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the Bad Science website
27.05.2008
AFTERWORD
And now, in June 2011, the editorial board of "Eternal Youth" refutes all of the above with a sense of deep satisfaction. As it turned out, both pork powder and the fingertip grown with it are not garbage science, but lousy journalism. If the correspondent who launched this story in the media had been more educated and smarter, the story would not have turned out to be so stupid and implausible. And Dr. Badylyak, God bless him and his patients, recently managed to partially restore the thigh muscles of a soldier who received a serious injury.