On Any Given Day

... It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. --the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1859)

There is so much one might comment on, daily.

Given all of that there is to choose from, I thought the following article on “Fetal Skin Cells, Healing Burns” might be of the greatest interest? At least today for me, it caught my eye.

Wondering if this area of study will generate the same "heat" that the furor over Embryonic Stem Cell research fostered, and continues to do so, today?

These grafted fetal skin cells seem to confer restorative powers to the burnt skin, allowing the damaged tissue to heal itself. Eight child and infant patients underwent this grafting process. They have not apparently yet tested this healing process in older patients, but there is no reason to think otherwise, they say.

The treated wounds took an average of 15 days to heal, as opposed to other forms of treating similar burns frequently taking up to six times as long.

The remarkable flexibility of the skin mended with the fetal cells meant that the patients recovered full movement of their hands and fingers, the authors said.

Furthermore, the result not only gave the patients nearly perfect skin, but also spared them the trauma of having a graft taken from elsewhere on their body.

Tis a Brave New World