Canadian Scientists Regrow Teeth

54mc writes "APL reports that Canadian Scientists have created the first device able to regrow teeth and bones. The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada."

Re:Tyranny Of Patents

[heinousjay]

Fantastic rant. It's logically inconsistent, substitutes opinions for facts, uses examples that don't illustrate your point, and sets up strawmen as its main thrust. Absolutely Slashdottian.

Re:So how exactly does it work?

[goonies]

"with low frequency ultrasound pulses" is pretty uninformative for me.

..and pretty much wrong ;-) The article said "low-intensity pulsed ultrasound"
low frequency ultrasound is like saying: "Thank God, I'm atheist!"
I think they call it "Contradictio in adjecto" (see also: oxymoron [wikipedia.org])

...and sorry for the nitpicking!

Re:Medical research is too slow

[Vellmont]

A proper engineering job would have taken six months, max, and they could have kept working on the science.

You can figure out how long it would take to engineer a device you've just heard of all of 20 minutes ago from a short, non-technical article posted on slashdot?

Re:Tyranny Of Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

If you worked in a University performing basic science research or medical research then you would know that you are required to sign forms saying that the University has the right to patent anything you come up with in your research, whether you want to or not. Large universites have teams of patent lawyers going through all publications to look for anything remotely patentable.

Even though an idealized scientist working for the sake of increasing human knowledge and the betterment of mankind might oppose patenting such an invention, the reality is different. Science does not pay well, and people like money. Besides, you don't have a choice when it comes to signing away the rights to the university. Heck, you are usually given a small percentage of the profits from the patent, which is more motivation for scientists to throw away their rights in such a cavalier fashion.

Gullibility of the Slashdot community

[osgeek]

I'm curious... when you folks read an article like this, do you automatically believe it?

Personally, when I see "filed for a patent earlier this month", "testing it on a dozen patients", and "commercialization in two years" -- coupled with a science-fiction-like technology -- I think "BULLSHIT".

Just add it to the list of other bullshit vaporware impractical/impossible inventions that show up every once in a while trying to grab funding/sucker dollars: holographic memory, ridiculous compression technologies, flying cars, perpetual motion machines, etc.

I find it pretty amazing that almost all of the responses in this thread just assume that these guys are telling the truth about their "discovery". I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to see a new miraculous bone and tooth growing technology be discovered... but scientific and religious claims are easy to make. It's easy to put out a press release. It's hard to prove miraculous things. It's hard to provide evidence for the seemingly-unbelievable.

Re:Horse Hockey!

[drunken_boxer777]

There is no reason to believe that 'tooth stem cells' wouldn't 'know' how to regrow the tooth. In fact, there is sufficient evidence that hypothetical 'tooth stem cells' would 'know' exactly how to regrow the tooth. Research in animals with regenerative capacity in certain tissues/organs has shown that the process of regeneration very closely mimics the process of the initial growth and development of that tissue during embryonic/larval stages. We're talking the same profile of gene expression and protein synthesis.

Therefore, if your tooth 'knew' how to grow once, it 'knows' how to grow again, given that there are 'tooth stem cells' and that there aren't factors which impede regeneration. (Which there are, in humans and most mammals. The slashdot story from a week or so ago about repairing damaged spinal cords in rats - the researchers used certain reagents which inhibit the inhibitors of regeneration, that's why it worked.)

Re:Inevitable Discovery

[crossmr]

it can happen frequently. Darren McCarty got hit in the face twice in the same series against anaheim, during which the anaheim fans booed him as he lay on the ice (thats another story).
They do take a lot of sticks in the face, and I'm not sure I buy this whole "a visor limits me" thing. I'm sure someone can design a visor that doesn't "limit" them. Were I in the NHL, I wouldn't hesitate to wear a full face mask, especially playing as a defenseman where I'd block a lot of shots.

Re:The Door Into Summer

[Catbeller]

Sure, Lazarus Long mentions rebudding teeth as a part of a long list of antigeria techniques used at the Howard Clinics in "Time Enough For Love".

But even he would say it was an obvious step. We've been needing this for as long as there've been people... BUT KUDOS for you, sir, for remembering science fiction didn't start on television and movies. Or anime.

There's treasure in the golden age of science fiction. A lot more imagination than displayed in current "sci-fi", which is to science fiction as Hostess cupcakes are to food. Thinking about it, the readers of golden-age SF went on to build moonships. Current sci-fi readers have a hard time thinking about driving electric cars. Difference of breadth of imagination.