it's science Sunday

I'm currently reading (...while training on the stationary bike so pleeease do not look for too much scholarly content here) the book "In Search of the Lost Cord" by Luba Vikhanski. It was published in 2001 and basically gives the history and the most up to date efforts Science has made to repair the damaged spinal cord. Most of the news I have heard before but I did find this one line of research particularly interesting. Have you heard of this thing called the stem cell? No really, anyone even remotely aware of politics probably would recognize this as a ripe are of SCI Research. The idea being, in the most scientifically perhaps not politically ideal situation, cultivating multipotent cells from human embryos that can then be induced to potentiate into healthy viable cells and transplanted to affect new growth into damaged areas. My reservation has always been that while this all seems good and possible musn't man then have to obtain some sort of god-like blueprint and mechanical abilities to redo the wiring? I can only imagine some confused little genie in there telling my right arm to flap when something smooth then sharp touches my left leg. What I was able to get out of at least one chapter of this book Ch. 12 "Mighty Cells" is that science doesn't need to know EVERYTHING before functional healing can begin. The idea researchers are working with is that they only have to do the "leg work" (i.e., cultivating and transplanting). Once the new tissue has been introduced it is nature itself that holds the key to unlocking the connections mystery.