The last bite

Urine for a shock

Although summer time is usually dubbed the silly season as far as the media are concerned, I have to say that this year hasn’t been too bad, although there have been one or two ‘real’ stores that have bordered on the far-fetched if not actually silly.

For example the Cell Regeneration Journal reported that scientists in China claim to have successfully grown a human tooth using stem cells taken from urine. The research team extracted the cells which would normally be passed from the body, and managed to coax them into becoming stem cells. They then used these to implant the teeth-like structures in mice, and said the resulting bundle of cells eventually contained ‘dental pulp, dentine, enamel space and enamel organ’.

Stranger things do happen but it also reminds me of a story about a very elderly man who claimed that his longevity was at least partly down to drinking his own urine every morning. Nothing particularly funny in that but it was the comment of a health correspondent who said that he found it ‘very hard to swallow’, that brought a smile to my face.