I see what you mean. I do agree that it probably would be as simple as growing some epiphyseal cartilage and just add water (HGH), or some other form of stem cell implantation to stimulate growth. I don't think that would be that hard to do in a lab, in theory. I could certainly see that within the next 10 years.
But to start doing it within humans? And for a med company to spend the funding on it? Knowing very well that they may not be able to secure a patent for such a process? And to modify this process to ensure that it grows bones properly, instead of just being a weird malignant overgrowth, or having any adverse effects. First off, I can't even imagine any researchers in America attempting to do this just because of the potential harmful effects that may arise during clinical trials.
You underestimate just how little doctors, the medical field, and pharmaceuticals care about this. I do think we'll see things to regenerate things like hip bones and knees for old people, because those have a practical medical purpose, but epiphyseal plates? I don't think we'll see for a long time. And also, adapting those processes I just mentioned into height growth or just bone growth in general would also take years and years of research and enormous costs on their own before they are used for height augmentation.
http://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R21-AR061265-02Funded by the National Institute of Health (NIS) and National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). This is the project where he successfully replicated epiphyseal cartilage. Funding wasn't renewed past the 2-year mark, most likely due to your keen observation that the implantation may prove too unpredictable to be considered "safe". However, Dr. Alsberg and his team have been working on precisely that by studying means by which to control stem cell differentiation through novel pathways, as well as testing other methods for chondrocyte generation through mesenchymal stem cells:
http://engineering.case.edu/ebme/alsberg/publicationsJust a few excerpts from his publications last year (and his first one this year):
Alsberg Publications
2018
Wang S, Bruning A, Jeon O, , Long F, Alsberg E, Choi CK: An in-situ photocrosslinking microfluidic technique to generate non-spherical, cytocompatible, degradable, monodisperse alginate microgels for chondrocyte encapsulation. Biomicrofluidics, (in press, 2018).
2017
Dikina AD, Alt DS, Herberg S, McMillan A, Strobel HA, Zheng Z, Cao M, Lai BP, Jeon O, Petsinger VI, Cotton CU, Rolle MW, Alsberg E: A modular strategy to engineer complex tissues and organs. Advanced Science (in press, 2017).
Dang PN, Herberg S, Varghai D, Riazi H, Varghai D, McMillan A, Awadallah A, Phillips LM, Jeon O, Nguyen MK, Dwivedi N, Yu X, Murphy WL, Alsberg E: Endochondral ossification in critical-sized bone defects via readily implantable scaffold-free stem cell constructs. Stem Cells Translational Medicine (in press, 2017).
Dikina AD, Lai BP, Cao M, Zborowski M, Alsberg E: Magnetic field application or mechanical stimulation via magnetic microparticles does not enhance chondrogenesis in mesenchymal stem cell sheets. Biomaterials Science (in press, 2017).
Almeida H, Dikina A, Mulhall K, O'Brien F, Alsberg E, Kelly, D: Porous Scaffolds Derived from Devitalized Tissue Engineered Cartilaginous Matrix Support Chondrogenesis of Adult Stem Cells. ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering (in press, 2017).
Cunniffe GM, Gonzalez-Fernandez T, Daly A, Sathy BN, Jeon O, Alsberg E, Kelly DJ: 3D Bioprinting of PCL Reinforced Gene Activated Bioinks for Bone Tissue Engineering Tissue Engineering, Part A (in press, 2017).
Dikina AD, Almeida HV, Cao M, Kelly DJ, Alsberg E: Scaffolds derived from ECM produced by chondrogenically-induced human MSC condensates support human MSC Chondrogenesis. ACS Biomaterials (in press, 2017). Invited for special themed issue “Biomimetic Bioactive Materials: The Next Generation of Implantable Devices.”
Sathy BN, Olvera D, Gonzalez-Fernandez T, Cunniffe GM, Pentlavalli S, Chambers P, Jeon O, Alsberg E, McCarthy HO, Dunne N, Donahue TLH, Kelly DJ: RALA complexed α-TCP nanoparticle delivery to mesenchymal stem cells induces bone formation in tissue engineered constructs in vitro and in vivo. Journal of Material Chemistry B (in press, 2017).
Doctors are morons, they don't care about your actual quality of life nor do they care about the problems short people, balding men, micropenised men, painfully ugly people, etc.. because they are all "medically healthy" and are not truly in "physical" pain. Prescribe SSRIs and move on, that's their modus operandi.
Agreed.
But yep, if you get epiphyseal cartilage it's done and game over, there are only what, ~270-206 bones in the human body? For a couple hundred thousand I can imagine a procedure where every single bone is nurtured with some artificial form of epiphyseal cartilage in direct proportion to the amount that would be present if you were still young and growing (as well as in direct proportion to how much you would like to grow) and then you simply just have to wait to grow "naturally." That would be a dream come true. But I really think this is, at the very least, 50 years off still before it is used in humans.
50 years is, again, WAY too conservative. Even if we assume the technology isn't available within the next 10 years, advanced computer systems (sophisticated AIs, data mining algorithms, etc) will be here within 20 for sure. These are already used in research and studies in the fields of Neurology and Cancer research. They speed up discoveries of new techniques for treating diseases by an astounding amount.
This thing you're talking about where the technology is used to increase the length of every bone in your body to make you perfectly proportional is more likely MUCH farther away, yes. But most people on this forum, and I'm willing to bet most short men in general, would be willing to sacrifice proportionality to some extent if it meant increasing their stature.
This isn't PSL (I feel like you're from there). Most people here aren't obsessed with being male models with 25 inch bideltoids or whatever neurotic bullshyt. For most of the short statured male community, longer legs are more than enough to solve their problem (hence traditional leg-lengthening surgery). In some of the more extreme cases (< 5'4"), MAYBE arm lengthening and a small amount of interspinal disk height increase.
Also lol at thinking the "short-statured" community would come together. 90% of short men are just so painfully beyond delusional and think they are hot because after being ignored for women by 10 years and going bald, they now own a business and work out and can pick up a fat single mom. It's not going to happen. A lot of short-statured men don't even see a problem with their height like on /r/short just a lot of retards trying to act like they're not missing out on a lot of massive social and sxxual components of male adult life.
I absolutely agree that they're delusional and most likely would never be interested in helping, but Reddit's r/short doesn't comprise "90%" of the short-statured male community in the least. That board is made up of maybe 50 "regulars" (like the user 5ft4mike) who spend the whole day circlejerking and pretending to be "alpha".
You pretty much are trying to do the same thing the user Harald Oberlaender has been trying to do for YEARS and you can see how far he's gotten.
http://www.limblengtheningforum.com/index.php?topic=5139.0
This research is not going to take off anytime soon, at least not until we are well past our youth. And if it does the "short community" is going to be 0% responsible for it. I also lol at these people coming together.
1.) "Harald Oberlaender" is, in all likelihood, a scammer trying to con people into sending his private "organization" (don't remember the name) money. I'm not asking anyone to send me a thing. MAYBE if the community of short-statured people who want to be taller grows enough, we could all use one of various third-party crowdfunding systems in place to send funds to researchers. This would help things along, but wouldn't be absolutely necessary. Balding is researched very often because researchers know that if a safe, effective solution is available, people will pay for one.
2.) The research has already "taken off", and it was without the short community saying anything about it, so I guess you're half right?
3.) You "lol" at everything I have to say, because you're angry at me for rejecting and publicly debunking your feel-good positivist delusion posts. I understand. It's hard to face reality. But attacking me doesn't change anything.
Because nothing is even close to make gaining height otherwise possible.
And no, LL is not crippling you. If you lengthen sensibly and have no big complications. You lose some athletic abilities but nowhere close to crippling.
For some people, losing "some athletic abilities" isn't acceptable or worth it. For others, the risk of "big complications" isn't acceptable or worth it. Lengthening "sensibly" has nothing to do with developing complications or not, and neither does picking a good doctor.
Nobody wants to end up like Unicorn or other posters who ruined their lives with LL. A lot of people risk LL because they have no other hope or means of escaping short stature.
Doctors can't even create artificial hearts, kidneys etc and people die everyday because they have to wait years for donors and some of you think that you are going to get taller by geting some pills or something like that?
It's not by "getting some pills". Please don't belittle or trivialize the research if you haven't read and don't understand it.
This is veey distant and imo it will never come to reality because babies in the future could have certain genes that will define their height, eye colour and all these so short stature will be extinct so there is no need for therapies that treat short stature.
It's absolutely comical that you think this type of genetic engineering is close but basic stem cell tissue engineering is "veey distant" [sic]. Molecular biology clearly isn't your field of expertise.
So yes, LL is the one and only solution for so many years that all of us will be dead or very old.
If you want to talk about future generations then ok, but for us and at least the next generation LL will be the choice for geting taller.
It's a little bit suspicious how hard you're trying to discourage people from seeking alternatives to distraction osteogenesis. I feel like this has less to do with you believing a better solution won't come about "in our lifetimes" and more to do with the fact you've already taken the risks and hampered your physical abilities by doing LL and you don't want anyone else to be able to get a treatment that doesn't do that, i.e. "if I can't have it, no one can" syndrome.