Apologies if someone has posted already, I didn’t skim through before posting!

CNN was peddling this BS story about a fingertip “regenerating” but it looks like a plain old fingertip that healed because the nail bed was still intact. I did this myself 12 years ago, when my finger was slammed in a door. I went to my regular doctor at the time. He cleaned it out, removed some ragged pointy bits of fingernail stuck in the stump, and then gave me a tetanus shot. It took six months for my nail to grow back. Looks normal now, maybe a tiny bit crooked.

So why did this person spend $1600 on “stem cell activating powder?” And why on earth is CNN running an article claiming it works? An article by a doctor invested in the company that sells the powder? Shameful! Her fingertip would have healed just fine with gauze and antibiotic cream.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/09/pinky.regeneration.surgery/index.html

What’s ridiculous is that the finger DIDN’T grow back! The tip healed and the nail grew over it so it looks close to normal, but as the woman herself says “It’s shorter than the other one.”

I actually cut off my fingertip as a child, and it grew back. But there have been papers written about the fingertips of young children growing back. The ability is lost by the time you are ten, and it usually occurs when the injury is allowed to heal unaided (I hid the injury from my parents, I was having too much fun at the summer camp and did not want to go home). The story in the news was just BS and she got ripped off, I read that link and thought to myself….a fool and her money…! My finger tip is the same length as the one on my other hand.

I remember reading some stuff about regeneration in Discover Magazine (I think) a while back.  Dealing with fingers, they found that fingertips do have a natural ability to regenerate that becomes weaker as we get older.  The article specifically mentioned a practice of skin grafting onto the fingertip that is common practice, that actually prevents this regenerative process.  Geckos were the main test subjects.

I was swimming in a lagoon as a child when I pulled down my snorkeling mask over my face to explore the diving dock fish. I remember cutting my finger tip on a piece of metal on the mask, and watching the tip fall into the water. It hurt like hell, but I was having too much fun to stop. I just grasped my finger in my fist and swam to shore. It was my non-dominant hand so it was pretty easy to hide from the counselors. I never thought anything of the fact that the tip grew back until I read research into it as an adult. I can tell you it got absolutely no treatment, I was a pretty active kid, and probably lucky I didn’t get a nasty infection!

A couple of the fingers on right hand are slightly longer than the ones on my left.  I’ve never cut off a finger tip.  Though I did lose the nail on my right big toe as a kid.  (I dropped a half-gallon can of Hi-C on my foot.)  It grew back.

I will be impressed when they can regrow a finger from the first joint - including the bone. Until then, these cases all seem like regular old flesh wounds closing. 

Dead Monky - 14 September 2010 10:13 AM

A couple of the fingers on right hand are slightly longer than the ones on my left.  I’ve never cut off a finger tip.  Though I did lose the nail on my right big toe as a kid.  (I dropped a half-gallon can of Hi-C on my foot.)  It grew back.

Amazing, I wonder if you could ge CNN to write a story about it!! But first you have to rub something on it to ‘make’ it grow back!!

Jules - 14 September 2010 03:10 PM

I will be impressed when they can regrow a finger from the first joint - including the bone. Until then, these cases all seem like regular old flesh wounds closing. 

I think that is why I was unimpressed when my finger tip grew back. There was no bone damaged/cut off. I think it was more or less a slick advert for that doctor’s powder and ‘technique’!

I think they’re getting closer.  Every year you see a new Frankenstein story about some research team that grew an ear or a nose or something on the back of a mouse.

Dead Monky - 14 September 2010 03:25 PM

I think they’re getting closer.  Every year you see a new Frankenstein story about some research team that grew an ear or a nose or something on the back of a mouse.

Now that type of research is fascinating and really coming along. I will be excited to see human trials along those lines on a large scale. Have you seen the “printer” they can use to “print” out layers of tissue to make a new organ skeleton/scaffold of tissue? Amazing!

However, until then this “magic powder” not regulated by the FDA is still not causing “fingers to grow back.” If the powder has any promise, it should be in FDA clinical trials, not for sale for cash in the doctor’s office that is invested in the company. 

I saw that. Much more amazing than the fingertip story. OTOH, creationist can point to it as proof that god does heal amputees!!

That printer doodad is pretty awesome.  I love when stuff from sci-fi becomes reality.  I want a teleporter now!  Fetch me one!

Been saving this one for Halloween

You see I have two experiences with finger regeneration. First my right middle finger, then a few years later my left middle finger.

It was a Swiss Metzgerei, butcher shop, sausage-maker, plus gaststätte. I was cutting beef bones on a bandsaw. Unfortunately being inexperienced, I didn’t appreciate the different density between hard bone and cartilage near the joints. Opps, a split second slip and my finger went right into the blade. If you hold the back of your hand in front of you it came in near the base of the nail at about 7 o’clock and in a split second went nearly all the way through. Fortunately, it seems to miss the bone.

Here we go First Aid Swiss style… old school that is: I was taken to the gaststätte, the boss grabbed a bottle of brandy poured a large shot then had me place my finger into the brandy for disinfecting while he got the first aid kit. He gauzed and taped the wound. Then told me to down the bloody shot, being the sport I was, down it went. Another shot of brandy for me, and one for him, a toast to good health and it was back to the slaughterhouse, though never to revisit the bandsaw.

Unfortunately, I was an illegal worker, and these folks were doing me a great favor by letting me work while I was waiting for a legal summer job to kick in. Thus I never saw a doctor and it was never stitched up. The next half year was spent watching the distal piece of meat die and atrophy, while the finger proper did an amazing regeneration act. Ugly and stinky and how the mild infection never spread, I’ll never know. Actually, I do know. My aghast summer employers sent me to their doctor who cleaned it gave me antibiotics and checked on it every few weeks. Eventual this disgusting dead lump got sloughed off and I was left with a regenerated finger tip, and one funky impressive birdie to boot.

Then, perhaps five years later on the morning after an all night Silverton Halloween rager, I was at a chop saw and with an incredibly stupid maneuver mangled the tip of my left middle finger. Very embarrassing as I was also the job site safety guy. A mirror injury to the previous one, except there was no flap of finger left over, that was left splattered all over the chop saw.

This time I did go to a doctor who grafted some skin from under my arm onto the finger tip. So there I was for another half year watching the grafted piece of skin slowly dry up as the finger proper regenerated itself. Eventually the graft sloughed off replaced by another funny looking birdie. The doc did warn me this would probably happen, at least there wasn’t another weird infection threat this time.

About three decades later one has to look closely to see anything wrong with them… even better those remain my worst industrial accidents… to date…

Proof positive that finger tips do have regenerative powers… hahaha
Happy Halloween  

{you know… typos}

that is so gnarly. what’s a birdie?

domokato - 01 November 2010 11:11 AM

that is so gnarly. what’s a birdie?

displaying back of ones fist with middle finger fully erection ~
usually under the spell of angry stresses ~
often intended to insult and increase ambient level of provocation within a situation.

But, given the garnly condition of my two digits - I was afforded a comedic backdrop for the display of said birdies  

at least during the remainder of my roaring twenties….