Powder Could Help Wounded Regrow Limbs

Powder sprinkled on the wounded hand of an Iraq veteran might help him regrow a lost finger, CNN reports. The new therapy, taking a cue from the regenerative abilities of salamanders, uses a powder made from pig tissue to trick the body into using stem cells to attract other cells—and eventually grow whole new body parts.

"Science fiction eventually becomes true, doesn't it?" says a doctor at the Brooke Army Medical Center. "If it is next to the skin, it will start making skin. If it's next to a tendon, it will start making a tendon, and so that's the hope, at least in this particular project, that we can grow a finger." (More amputees stories.)