July 27, 2006

• Semantics

  
  

  (Edited and condensed from New Scientist Print Edition 26  July 2006  Andy Coghlan)

  
  

  "Electric currents applied to the skin can speed up wound healing. It was reported 150 years ago by the German physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond, it has been ignored ever since.

  
  

  Now Josef Penninger of the Austrian Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and Min Zhao of the University of Aberdeen, UK, have demonstrated that natural electric fields and currents in tissue play a vital role in orchestrating the wound-healing process by attracting repair cells to damaged areas.

  
  

  The researchers have also identified the genes that control the process. "We were originally skeptical, but then we realized it was a real effect and looked for the genes responsible," Penninger says. "It's not homeopathy, it's biophysics.”

  
  

   

  
  

  Oh.  Okay.  Now that it’s  “biophysics”  I guess we can stop ignoring it.

  
  

   

  • 6:05 pm
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