You can now grow body parts with "pixie dust"

God forbid it happens to anyone of us, but if you lose a limb, a recent scientific breakthrough now makes it possible to regrow body parts. 

Scientists hope that within 10 years we'll be able to regrow arms and legs.  And the US military is all ears, recognizing the tremendous potential for restoring body parts of injured soldiers. 

The miracle powder, or "pixie dust" that does the trick, is made by scraping the cells from the inside of a pig's bladder. 

BBC NEWS | Health | The man who grew a finger (watch the video)

"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."

It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.

"We don't know where the piece went."

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he'd lost it for good.

Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

'Pixie dust'

How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.

Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.

For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

"It took about four weeks before it was sealed."

Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."

The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.