This is a fascinating story. Oddly, it was first reported in The Australian -- and I haven't seen much pick up from the U.S. media. The religious right types are probably going to freak out over this, but, wow, it's amazing:
A US soldier whose leg muscles were destroyed by a bomb in Afghanistan has been able to start walking again after using a radical therapy that enabled his body to regrow the lost tissue.It is remarkable.
Marine Corporal Isaias Hernandez lost 70 per cent of his right thigh muscles in the blast, an injury so severe that amputation is normally the only treatment.
Corporal Hernandez was, however, offered a therapy in which his remaining muscles were impregnated with an experimental growth promoting substance extracted from pig bladders. It prompted the muscles to regenerate to a point that Corporal Hernandez has regained most of his strength.
"It was a remarkable recovery," said Stephen Badylak, the tissue engineering director at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
