Quote :

"Apparently not satisfied with simply building robotic body parts, the Department of Defense has now announced a brand new effort that it hopes will one day allow it to regrow actual body parts. Dubbed the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (or AFIRM), the new group will explore the use of stem cell research, among other things, to "reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers." Or, as the Army surgeon general that'll be overseeing the program puts it: if an animal like a salamander can regrow a lost tail or limb, "Why can't a mammal do the same thing?" Not surprisingly, the institute apparently also won't be hard up for resources, with it boasting a budget of about $250 million for its first five-year period, and it enlisting the help of three universities, including Rutgers, Wake Forest, and the University of Pittsburgh. "

why isnt this being handled by...oh i dont know...a medical science project and not the military?

4/22/2008 11:00:47 PM

DoD tends to have a lot of good test subjects.

4/22/2008 11:07:42 PM

95% of technology that finds its way into the private sector originated in military applications.

4/22/2008 11:26:58 PM

The DoD and military have a huge amount of funding, and they also have to be concerned with a wide range of topics, as applied to the military, that help them improve and better understand every aspect of their operations. So almost anything can be funded by the DoD as long as it can have some potential impact on the military; a lot of those things will also have natural crossover impact for the rest of society.

For instance, they have projects funded to better understand the training needs of hospital staff in army hospitals. It's not a military application, per se, but it affects their operations.

So a lot of really cutting-edge work ends up being funded by the DoD simply because no one else has the kind of funding to throw at extremely difficult or speculative projects like limb regeneration. In this case, it's easy to see the potential application, as I would assume deployed soldiers have one of the highest rates of amputation and limb dismemberment of any occupation.


And as the article mentions, they're basically staffing the project with university researchers and doctors. It's not like they're doing the work in-house; they just provide the funding and an umbrella organization to coordinate the collaboration between universities.

[Edited on April 23, 2008 at 12:01 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2008 11:59:54 PM

I'm sure that there are plenty of private and non-military public sectors looking into this from one angle or another. If anything, the DoD's foray into this area is beneficial as they've got huge amounts of money to throw around. Through DARPA and other research agencies, DoD is surprisingly good at coordinating these sorts of cutting edge projects.

My surprise is that they'll be involved in stem cell research, something which has proven to be a lightning rod for groups like NIH.

4/23/2008 3:31:41 AM

Goddamn military-industrial complex. Who the fuck do they think they are, starting a program to come up with ways to fix their injured fascist lackeys?

4/23/2008 3:52:04 AM

4/23/2008 7:38:14 AM

While I dont mind some good research going on, dont you think they should be taking better care of our wounded soldiers now?

4/23/2008 8:48:35 AM

I'm sure that all of the research money is coming out of the VAs budget.

4/23/2008 11:44:37 AM

The DOD is probably the largest single group that awards pre and post-doctoral fellowships in cancer biology.

4/23/2008 11:40:32 PM

doesn't the private sector already do no-holds-bar research on stem cells?

is this simply the largest investment in it yet?

4/25/2008 4:41:55 PM