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Some of our closest invertebrate cousins, like this Acorn worm, have the ability to perfectly regenerate any part of their body that's cut off - including the head and nervous system. Humans have most of the same genes, so scientists are trying to work out whether human regeneration is possible, too.
Regeneration – now that'd be a nice superpower to have. Injure an arm? Chop it off and wait for it to grow back. Dicky knee? Ingrown toenail? Lop off your leg and get two for one!
It sounds ridiculous, but there's a growing number of scientists that believe body part regeneration is not only possible, but achievable in humans. After all, not only are there plenty of animals that can do it, we can do it ourselves for our skin, nails, and bits of other organs.
Perhaps humans don't regrow body parts because, unlike worms, they have an idea 'how much that stings.'
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday December 02 2016, @04:33AM
Probably because we only need to do it once. Unlike sharks and other animals that regrow teeth regularly, we don't do anything that really requires new teeth. Our teeth tend to last a lifetime and when we lose our teeth we have a tendency to not have sufficient jaw left to keep new teeth anchored.
Until we can regenerate the bone, ligaments and gum that keep teeth in place, there's not much point in regrowing teeth as they'd fall out pretty much immediately anyways.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 02 2016, @06:57AM
we don't do anything that really requires new teeth
Eating. Teeth get lost through injury or illness.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday December 02 2016, @08:44AM
Exactly. Abrasion. The perfect businessword for dental insurance... not covered if the problem is a result of abrasion.
So I ended up paying full price for a crown when I thought I was "covered".
Coverage, my ass. I was just about as covered as a pretty girl at the beach wearing a string bikini, but not nearly as sweet to look at.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Friday December 02 2016, @02:24PM
I may be getting a crown myself in the near-ish future. Did you submit a pre-determination before getting the procedure done, to see if your insurer would in fact cover it?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:32AM
I had my first go-around with insurance about ten years ago. I had a terrible misunderstanding of the word "covered".
The first thing my dentist did was give me an estimate of dental work, then when I questioned why the bill was so high when I supposedly was "covered" by insurance, I was told that my "erosion" was due to "abrasion" ( aka. grinding teeth at night ), and not covered. His estimate was full of "not covered".
I dropped my dental insurance the next day. The dentist told me the only thing that my so-called "insurance" paid for was the office visit, exam, and cleaning. The rest was "peace-of-mind" talk to give me the illusion of being covered so I would continue to pay the premiums.
It sounded good until one reads the exclusions. Anything pricey? Not covered. They say it is in big print, but have another clause somewhere else in small print that says it isn't.
It finally sank in.
Where do insurance companies get the money to pay for all that staff, big buildings, and advertising? Gullible people like ME, who are under the illusion of thinking someone else is gonna pay my bills.
I had to wake up to the notion I was just being taken along for a ride at my expense.
Covered, my ass.
Speaking in retrospect ten years later ( I just had dental work done today, incidentally ), I am coming out better by paying the dentist directly - and I am speaking as one who has spent over ten thousand dollars in dental work over the last twenty years. ( works out to about $500/year ... most of it going into coronation ceremonies, aka "crowns" ).
I am over 65, for what that's worth... but still find dental insurance a very poor deal. You like to *think* you are covered, but all you seem to do is finance a hierarchy of desk hens to shuffle paperwork back and forth and finance rounds of high salaries and bonuses for insurance executives. They aren't making money come out of thin air to pay your bills. They just play games with words to make it *sound* like a peace-of-mind move, until the bill comes due - and you are left holding the bag.
Or, at least, that has been my experience with those goons.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Francis on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:41PM
Eating, never destroys teeth unless you're nutritionally deficient already. If your getting sufficient amounts of calcium, vitamin D, mangesium and the other necessary ingredients of teeth as well as being in generally good health, you should never have problems with teeth decalcifying. Our teeth were evolved to survive to an age of nearly a hundred and they generally do that just fine as long as you're not deficient in the necessary building blocks of healthy teeth.
Likewise, it's more or less impossible to get a cavity forming in a healthy tooth. It just doesn't happen as the tooth never weakens enough for it to happen due to the constant outflow of minerals.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 03 2016, @05:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @03:48AM
Yes, but there's no evidence that eating causes damage to teeth. As long as your getting adequate vitamins and minerals, the teeth will continually remineralize to deal with that damage. We evolved to live decades without access to dentists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @07:24AM
Until we can regenerate the bone, ligaments and gum that keep teeth in place, there's not much point in regrowing teeth as they'd fall out pretty much immediately anyways.
This is one of the most ignorant things I have ever read. Jaw loss? What are you talking about? Have you never heard of dental implants? New teeth, just not ones you grow yourself, you have to have someone grow them in a lab, in a petri dish, cloned from stem cells taken from your bone marrow and cultured to be an exact match to the holes in your head! No, none of that is true, either. But implants are. Why do you post stuff like this, Francis? It is wrong, and does not even at least provoke or amuse.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:06PM
his is one of the most ignorant things I have ever read. Jaw loss? What are you talking about? Have you never heard of dental implants?
I have heard of dental implants. I have heard that they cause jaw bone loss.
http://www.webmd.boots.com/healthy-ageing/news/20100119/dental-implants-and-bone-loss [boots.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:15PM
Nice, a fake WebMD ran by a beauty supply company. I believe EVERYTHING I read there.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday December 02 2016, @11:38PM
It isn't fake. If you go to http://www.webmd.com/ [webmd.com] and look under the "WebMD Network" section, there's a link to the BootsWebMD site.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday December 02 2016, @11:46PM
Here are links to the abstract of the scientific paper.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0501.2005.01137.x [doi.org]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16117768 [nih.gov]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Francis on Saturday December 03 2016, @04:57AM
Hi Aristarchus, I see you're posting this BS as though you're being insightful. Ask just about any dentist out there, you lose teeth because the jaw and connective tissues can no longer support the tooth. Some people will lose teeth due to severe decay and injury, but that's less common.
You don't think the bone loss isn't visible on an X-Ray? Dentists do a lot of stupid stuff, but surely, you're not suggesting that when they consider installing implants, they just ignore the jaw when they do that?
Also, dental implants are not real teeth. They look like real teeth, but they're not real teeth. They don't have circulation and they don't recalcify the way that a real tooth does. They're typically attached to a metal screw or similar.
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:43AM
Wow, Francis, are you suggesting you actually know what you are talking about? This is a vast improvement. Keep it up. Tooths recalcify? I did not know that! Wow. Metal screw? Implants? Not. You almost pulled it off, Francis. But your post here reveals your ignorance even further. I will not point it out in detail, since I am already embarrassed enough for you. But seriously, you missed the fact that the original article was about regeneration of all human body parts, including jaws and gums. I know something about this, since I had a finger cut off, and it grew back.
Always acted a little strange, however. Seemed to want to salute Hitler all the time. Just call me, "Dr. Strangelove"
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 02 2016, @08:53AM
Any dentist will tell you that is not true. However we do it less now because dentists warned us not to do it if we want to keep our teeth.
Solution: Regrow jaw as well.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 03 2016, @12:11AM
And I'm pretty sure they'll eventually be able to regrow a crushed and amputated arm or leg. I probably won't live to see it. Medical science advances really fast, though. I never thought my 20/400 eyes would ever be fixed, that I'd always need glasses, but now after surgery in 2006 when I had a CrystaLens planted in one because of a cataract I have better then 20/20 in that eye.
When I was twenty that was as impossible as supercomputers that everybody kept in their pockets. We never stop progressing.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:48AM
But apparently you used the other eye for your spell-checking. :-)
(I have no idea what 20/400 means, but with a large number, I guess it's very bad).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @11:49AM
I'm pretty sure the two numbers are distance at which you can resolve something, and distance at which normal vision can resolve it.
If you can read a street sign at 400 ft, mcgrew had to be within 20 ft to read it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 03 2016, @07:56PM
That's what I get for being careless, and it's the kind of mistake I shouldn't be making, ever.
20/20 is normal eyesight. 20/400 means what I can read 20 feet (ft~1/3m) a normal sighted person can read at 400 feet. Now I can read at 20 feet what a normally sighted person can't see any farther than 16 feet (20/16). The doctor said that 98% of people's vision is better than 20/25 after surgery.
It was correctable with glasses before surgery, now I don't need glasses, even reading glasses, and I'm 64 years old. Best thousand bucks I ever spent!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:38PM
Our teeth tend to last a lifetime and when we lose our teeth we have a tendency to not have sufficient jaw left to keep new teeth anchored.
Actually much of that jaw bone loss is a result of losing teeth. Once the teeth are gone, the jaw bone gets less stimulation and so you lose jawbone.