Dr. Robert Matheny came and spoke to our
Science(homeschool) students yesterday.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20070014869.html

He holds a patent on tissue regeneration
for cardiac tissue and is already using it.
He uses adult stem cells in his research and
sees no need for embryonic stem cells
at all. It was very interesting and
I hope our students came away with a lot
of new ideas and inspirations for careers!
(They asked great
questions so I'm sure they did.).

He also spent some 45 minutes or
more talking about Intelligent Design
and the complexity of cells/DNA etc
that points to God.

I asked (for my daughter who wasn't there
since she couldn't skip class to come)
how close they were to growing heart valves.
She has a bicuspid aortic valve (birth defect)
- two flaps instead of three. They now
replace those valves with pig valves or
mechanical valves when it is needed.
He said that there is an 80% chance that by the
time she needs one
there will be a human grown valve
replacement available.

They are also working on spinal cord injuries
and even regrowing
limbs (they have had success with
regrowing parts of fingers now!).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,252704,00.html

This was so like WOW!
Pax