May 25, 2004
Silk from a sow's ear
Posted by karen at 05:00 PM in health . | 6 Comments
As I was sorting through journals this morning, the cover story of The Laryngoscope caught my eye.
My understanding is that you can take some ear cartilage from a pig, add enzymes and shake well, put it in a human ear mold (use gold cause it's inert), stick it back in the pig and grow yourself an ear. The authors indicated that this technique could be used in microtia surgical reconstruction to provide "a tissue-engineered cartilage auricle in a predetermined shape and size."
Comments
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Why are we always growing ears in and on things? Posted by: ryan at May 25, 2004 11:19 PM |
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It only takes 9 pounds of pressure to tear off an ear, so perhaps more people lose ears than we think. Posted by: polamex at May 26, 2004 8:53 AM |
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Maybe ears are just super-easy to grow. Also, those pictures make me a little sick. Posted by: Emily at May 26, 2004 9:21 AM |
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Haha, they are a bit nasty. I wouldn't want to walk around with an ear that looks like that. Posted by: ryan at May 26, 2004 10:41 AM |
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Yeah, that's just the cartilage without any skin. Sorry I wasn't clear. I think that ears are pretty simple and that's part of the popularity. Also a lot of people are born without ear cartilage (microtia) or lose an ear somewhere along the line. Posted by: karen at May 27, 2004 3:15 PM |
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Jacqueline Saburido could probably use this as well as a face transplant. Posted by: agent1073 at May 28, 2004 2:01 AM |