Regeneration

penny wrote:

markusschaber wrote:My guess is that it shomehow involves stem cels. First, recreating the lost limb in a simulated embryonal environment, then growing it with accelerated speed to adulthood size.

And, of course, everything is much more complicated than it sounds here, that's why it's SciFi and not reality right now.

Good guess. Beats me.


Another thing, do people like Honor who does not regenerate still respond to quick heal? Textev frequently comments about how someone is responding well to quick heal. Is that because people sometimes fail to respond to quick heal?

Anyway, as I said I thought the limbs would be grown back quickly and that the bulk of the downtime would be learning to use that limb all over again. And I wonder -- since the limbs are gone, like the legs -- if those legs can be regrown back longer. Increasing height. I suppose the original genetic code decides that.

I never imagined that the limbs would be regrown in the laboratory then reattached. Anyway, am I correct that there are some things Regen can't do? For instance, if a body is severed just under the ribcage, then that is a tall order for Regen.

I suppose, if caught in time, there is no reason that someone whose body has been severed and mangled from the neck down can't be kept alive by artificial means and the bulk of the body regenerated? That would be a VERY tall order for regen, I know, but why would it be impossible?

So many questions.

As far as I remember, quick heal works for almost all humans (I don't recall of any mention of people not responding to quick heal), but there's a difference in how well they respond - in other words, how much the healing is accelerated comparing to natural healing.

For regen, I don't imagine the limbs being grown in the lab and then reattached, but being regrown at their original place at the body. Maybe similar to how some reptiles can regrow their tail, or axolotls can regrow any limbs or even their spinal cord. Starfish can even regrow their whole body from a single limb, including their neurons.

My understanding is that regen could regenerate everything, as long as the body is kept alive long enough. My memories of the descriptions of Emily Alexander make me think she could have been fully recovered if regen had worked for her.

While I'm rather sure about what I wrote above, the next paragraph is to be taken with a grain of salt, consider it my personal speculation:
In cases like brain damage, the regen would generate fresh, untrained brain tissue, and all the memories, personality etc. would be gone. So there may be cases where regen could work in theory, but is considered "off limits" in practice, if only for ethical reasons (Beowulf codex?). And apart from the people who don't respond to regen at all, there may be different limits or grades of how well and fast regen works for different people.

penny wrote:

markusschaber wrote:My guess is that it shomehow involves stem cels. First, recreating the lost limb in a simulated embryonal environment, then growing it with accelerated speed to adulthood size.

And, of course, everything is much more complicated than it sounds here, that's why it's SciFi and not reality right now.

Good guess. Beats me.


Another thing, do people like Honor who does not regenerate still respond to quick heal? Textev frequently comments about how someone is responding well to quick heal. Is that because people sometimes fail to respond to quick heal?

Anyway, as I said I thought the limbs would be grown back quickly and that the bulk of the downtime would be learning to use that limb all over again. And I wonder -- since the limbs are gone, like the legs -- if those legs can be regrown back longer. Increasing height. I suppose the original genetic code decides that.

I never imagined that the limbs would be regrown in the laboratory then reattached. Anyway, am I correct that there are some things Regen can't do? For instance, if a body is severed just under the ribcage, then that is a tall order for Regen.

I suppose, if caught in time, there is no reason that someone whose body has been severed and mangled from the neck down can't be kept alive by artificial means and the bulk of the body regenerated? That would be a VERY tall order for regen, I know, but why would it be impossible?

So many questions.

markusschaber wrote:As far as I remember, quick heal works for almost all humans (I don't recall of any mention of people not responding to quick heal), but there's a difference in how well they respond - in other words, how much the healing is accelerated comparing to natural healing.

For regen, I don't imagine the limbs being grown in the lab and then reattached, but being regrown at their original place at the body. Maybe similar to how some reptiles can regrow their tail, or axolotls can regrow any limbs or even their spinal cord. Starfish can even regrow their whole body from a single limb, including their neurons.

My understanding is that regen could regenerate everything, as long as the body is kept alive long enough. My memories of the descriptions of Emily Alexander make me think she could have been fully recovered if regen had worked for her.

While I'm rather sure about what I wrote above, the next paragraph is to be taken with a grain of salt, consider it my personal speculation:
In cases like brain damage, the regen would generate fresh, untrained brain tissue, and all the memories, personality etc. would be gone. So there may be cases where regen could work in theory, but is considered "off limits" in practice, if only for ethical reasons (Beowulf codex?). And apart from the people who don't respond to regen at all, there may be different limits or grades of how well and fast regen works for different people.

Of course there have been cases where a brain injury did not affect the memories or personality, etc. I know of an instance where a nail had been driven through the brain and a full recovery from surgery had been made. As long as the brain stem itself isn't damaged.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4909827

Dr. Frankenstein has never had it so good than in the HV.

I will always be mystified that HV medicine and technology cannot replace a damaged eye. Even the current problem of the body rejecting a donor's eye should not be a problem in the HV.

penny wrote:I will always be mystified that HV medicine and technology cannot replace a damaged eye. Even the current problem of the body rejecting a donor's eye should not be a problem in the HV.

Well it can. But only using regen - which doesn't work for (IIRC) ~30% of the human race.


It's possible that between having a 100% solution (regen) for 70% of folks, and a 90% solution (artificial electronic eye) for the other 30%, that there simply wasn't much demand or funding for an alternate method.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:I will always be mystified that HV medicine and technology cannot replace a damaged eye. Even the current problem of the body rejecting a donor's eye should not be a problem in the HV.

Well it can. But only using regen - which doesn't work for (IIRC) ~30% of the human race.


It's possible that between having a 100% solution (regen) for 70% of folks, and a 90% solution (artificial electronic eye) for the other 30%, that there simply wasn't much demand or funding for an alternate method.

And again, when DW was initially setting up his universes, he attempted to make them as different as possible. So in this one, no Antimatter, hyper drones, Full AI, or organ cloning. He probably had an initial writeup for another universe which had a heavy lean on cloned organs - and either that whole storyline is still on a shelf, or organ cloning was toned down to the point where we don't know which other universe it was.