EUR This N That | Urban Black News Blog

The story of Frankenstein is a deep undertaking into science, image, and society that has possibly given scientists the courage and impetus to look deeper into the impossible.  Some scientists have been able to accomplish feats of extraordinary scientific advancement and cause the impossible to become possible.

Dr. Peter Rubin, a plastic surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has been successful at taking the animal “scaffolding” or animal cell tissue to rebuild muscle in humans.  Sgt. Ron Strang, a 28-year-old Marine was severely injured in an explosion in Afghanistan that blew off part of his left thigh.  Dr. Rubin is conducting a study that has successfully helped him to move his leg forward.  Sgt. Strang was unable to move his leg forward without the quadriceps muscle that was blown from his leg, according to the New York Times.

Many people will not care that Dr. Rubin took a pig’s cellular tissue to rebuild their leg or arm.  They just want help.  He told the New York Times:

“We are seeing evidence of remodeling of tissues,” he said.

According to the report Dr. Rubin cut scar tissue from Sgt. Strang’s leg and stitched it onto a “extracellular matrix from a pig urinary bladder” and infused that into the remaining healthy thigh muscle to rebuild it. Now two years later, Strang, who is a tall, athletic man that had to give up running and had admittedly “got really good at falling,” is now running on a treadmill and is contemplating becoming a police officer. Strang said:

“If you know me, or know to look for it, you can see a slight limp,” he said. “But everybody else, they go, ‘I would never have guessed.’ ”

Read more here on the study and how many advancements this discovery has created.

-J.C. Brooks