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Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Human tissue regeneration. Imagine being able to regrow limbs and organs!

For a long time Becker's book was about the only thing out there: "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" by Robert O. Becker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book)

Now there's pretty serious progress being made at Levin's lab: "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" talk by Michael Levin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698

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I discovered only about 10 million people in the world are amputees, having recently become interested in biomechatronics. Most of them live in developing countries. I suspect this is the reason for the relative lack of research. There isn't big money in solving the problem although its solution would be immeasurably valuable to those it aids.

I'd pay quite a bit for knees that were as good as in my '20s.

Would you amputate your legs for the treatment?

I mean if there was longstanding evidence of the treatment working well enough and with low enough side-effects. I don't think we're anywhere close though. Think of phantom limb pain. That's a brain thing, and it's not clear whether being able to regrow extremities would also entail knowing enough about the brain / nervous system to fully solve phantom limb pain.

Do you have to amputate? My mom has had hip replacement surgery twice.

No, we're speculating about a future with widely available biomechatronic prosthetics that perform at or above the level of "normal" limbs.

If it were a common, reliable procedure - yes. Yes I would.

We get surgery without blinking all the time in this country, and the most common types are incredibly safe. You make leg replacement on the order of knee or hip joint replacement surgery, and you’ll have people beating down your door.

I think the same goes, if not twice over, for spine amd back wear and injuries.

I know there is the whole difficulty with nerves and what not, but I think at least half of my and my wife's families and extended families have back problems.

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