Our Transhuman Future: Muscles Grown From Pig Cells

The therapy can be used to re-grow muscles in soldiers (or anyone else) who's lost a lot of flesh to wounds.

t isn’t quite salamander territory, but it’s astonishingly close. The Pittsburgh team’s research means that, within this decade, the thousands of soldiers who’ve suffered major muscle loss during this decade’s wars can overcome devastating impairment — a life sentence of chronic pain, disability and no viable treatment short of amputation — and experience at least a 25 percent improvement in physical function. For civilians, the impact would incalculable. The kinds of trauma and health problems that now cause amputation, from car accidents and fires to cancer or diabetic peripheral vascular disease, would no longer cause irreparable damage.

Plus, within 15 years, I might be able to get enough muscle injections that I don't have to fear Toure menacing me in a dark corner of a J. Crew outlet store.

posted by Ace at 06:56 PM

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