Regeneration and rejuvenation: science fiction... right?

Having just watched Susan Lim and Anthony Atala talk on TEDMED, I'm amazed at what modern science can already do. They can take adult stem cells and turn them back into fully versatile stem cells - similar to embryonic stem cells but without the ethical dilemmas - and use them to regrow broken organs in the body. Another option is to take working cells from the bit of body you need to repair and grow more of them in a Petri dish. Then you take the cells, put them on a 'scaffold' and grow a whole new organ. There's actually someone out there who has a working bladder grown in a lab from her own bladder cells more than a decade ago.

I wonder if this would work for pituitary glands, and other glands in the body? The current research seems to focus on kidneys and livers because that's what the majority of people on the waiting lists for donor organs are waiting for. Are pituitaries more complex than kidneys and livers, or similar?

I imagined a cyborg solution to the problem of broken pituitaries, using nanotechnology. It seems the cell biology approach is the more likely candidate for success.

Games I play that save the world

I've finally started reading Reality is Broken and I learned about some great games that harness the gamer superpowers to make a real difference in the world. The first one is Chore Wars which turns doing the housework into an epic multiplayer adventure. The second is Foldit, where folding proteins is turned into a game. Scientists need to figure out how to fold proteins so they can make medical breakthroughs. Except there are millions of ways they can fold and even supercomputers take forever. If you don't want to play, you can also just lend them your computer's spare time.

Privatising the NHS isn't as bad as it sounds

In the early morning and every now and then in the car, I actually manage to hear some snippets of radio. On it, I've often heard people spouting off about the 'cuts to services' the government has had to implement. (They're not exactly cuts to services anyway, they're cuts to budget, which some councils apply badly - don't get me started). Anyway, everybody seems very concerned at the spectre of using private provision in the NHS. Once I signed a petition to stop parliament from passing an extremely silly law about internet safety and privacy, and now the same organisation keeps contacting me to sign more petitions. Sadly, I haven't agreed with them since, and the same goes for their latest petition to stop the reforms to the NHS. I say bring it on!

Addison's crisis - Not dead yet, Jim!

I haven't blogged for a bit as I was on holiday and when I returned, my hard drive mysteriously had crashed. At least we weren't burgled, as that is one of the favourite half-term pastimes in our neighbourhood.

It was quite an eventful holiday as we had occasion to use Kirk's emergency 100ml intramuscular hydrocortisone injection.