Re:Fix what is broken (Score 1)

I already pasted links to articles detailing the work on this in another post. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16214 1&cid=13556855 You are right about the fact that it's the ears that are damaged and not the DNA. You should read those and see if you still feel the same about "natural healing is not an option". Depends on what your definition of natural is though. For me it's natural if we use our bodies own systems to do something.

The thing is that it is our DNA that keeps our hearing cells from regenerating. But as has been mentioned on slashdot recently, scientists have noticed that RNA plays a bigger role in determining the functions of organisms than previously thought. One of the discoveries is RNAi (PBS Nova Science now has a great 15 min movie which explains what it's all about) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02.ht ml which could hopefully be used to "fix people's ears". It has already been used to improve a condition where people go nearly blind. There's also an experiment to explore this possibility (linked to in my other post). An earlier experiment has determined that elimination of the gene that codes for the "regeneration-blocking" rB1 protein that the earlier post mentioned can make even mature hearing cells start dividing. I am quite positive that we will have this technology eventually. I dare not guess when.

This experiment is the one that I think has the most potential right now, but there are also approaches involving turning support cells in the ear into hearing cells, transplanting stem cells and maybe cochlear implants one day will be powerful enough to work as well, if not even better, than biological ears.