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The Body Electric
ghost of a bone, we found cartilage in a five-fingered shape—this limb
had begun to grow a hand.
In general, though, it looked as if the current had to be of a certain
duration as well as a certain strength. This was no less disappointing to
us than it was to the Life photographer who visited the lab at that time
and wanted before and after shots with a rat playing the piano at the
end, but nonetheless we were very pleased. Since the blastemas always
formed around the electrodes and since redifferentiation proceeded into
organized tissue, we knew the current had stimulated true regeneration,
not some abnormal growth. Mammals still had the means for the orderly
reading out of their genetic instructions to replace lost parts. We would
simply have to learn more exactly the electrical requirements of the
whole process, then make devices to supply the proper current at the
proper time in the proper place.
When we published our results, it was hard to shroud our excitement
in the circumspect scientific jargon needed. We wrote that we'd acti-
vated true, though partial, regeneration with a minuscule direct current
and that the marrow cells seemed to be the source of the blastema. I
thought this claim was sober enough. Joe and I cautioned that other
factors had yet to be studied. Most important, we warned that if such a
tiny force could so easily switch on growth, it must be very powerful,
and we'd best know it thoroughly before using it routinely on humans,
lest we give them unwelcome growths—tumors.
I felt that, within the constraints of scientific propriety, we'd uttered
a rousing call for a big research push to open up the benefits of regenera-
tion to humans. It must have been a whisper, though, for it caused no
more ripples than a feather settling on a frog pond.
Philip Person, a dental surgeon at the Brooklyn VA hospital and a
friend whom I'd known for years, asked me to present our results to the
New York Academy of Medicine. Before the academy would permit
this, however, it insisted that two experts must visit the lab and look at
the actual data. One was Marc Singer, who enthusiastically agreed that
we'd really started regeneration in the rat. The other man was totally
negative, but he wasn't a specialist in regeneration, so the academy per-
mitted me to speak.
Singer was one of the few who showed much enthusiasm when I'd
finished reading my paper at the meeting. Most of the audience was
unresponsive,
there were few comments or criticisms
To these people,
electric
growth control
was still a vitalistic
impossibility,
and they
seemed
unwilling
to discuss
dedilfferentation. The
man
who'd
visited
our lab with Singercomplained
that
the amount of new
growth
was