It was not harmed by our work, so I think that's the answer that I would like to give.

Many people had children asking those questions, and so what we would say is, we removed the ear, and the mouse lived out a happy, normal life. It became a metaphor for both the good and bad things about the human condition, and the controversy about what it could generate in the future. It took on a life of its own over time and the world became intrigued with the image. So the BBC trailers for the program have that iconic shot with the interviewer and the mouse. When they went to my brother's lab at the University of Massachusetts, he showed them everything he was doing, and said 'I've got this really cool thing to show you,' which was the mouse with the ear on its back. So I asked my brother, people in my lab, and Bob not to bring up the mouse with the ear on its back so that we wouldn't create controversy.Д«ob and I didn't bring up the mouse with BBC. The true story is, I thought the visual image of having a human ear on the back of a mouse would be too controversial. That included me, Bob Langer at MIT and my brother Chuck. Several of us were contacted to be interviewed and filmed. In 1997 the BBC wanted to do a special on this emerging field of tissue engineering. Then you remove it from the incubator and implant the now-living structure in an animal. Once you've made the ear-shaped scaffolding, then you seed it with cartilage cells and put it all in an incubator. The material is man-made, biocompatible and bioabsorbable it disappears over time. The whole process involved making a scaffold that has the shape and the size of an ear. How did the mouse get the ear on its back? We developed a way to fashion a scaffolding in the shape of a human ear. We were making cartilage, and we could make it in specific shapes, so we decided that maybe we could make the specific shape of an ear. Then, when I was getting ready to go into the operating room with my friend, a well-known pediatric plastic surgeon, I asked him, 'What is the worst problem you have as a reconstructive plastic surgeon in children?' And he said it was the ear: they couldn't construct a good one. I thought, 'well why don't we do what humans do when we need something-we design it and we make it.' In the mid-80's, I was a pediatric surgeon and I was trying to address the organ shortage. My brother and I called it 'Euriculosaurus,' because when you looked at it from the side it kind of looked like a dinosaur. I just say 'the mouse with the ear on its back.' How do you refer to this mouse? It's alternately called 'The Vacanti Mouse' and 'the ear mouse.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. On the 20th anniversary of this noteworthy development, Newsweek spoke with Joseph Vacanti to hear what he has to say about the mouse, looking back two decades later. Throughout the public consciousness, the mouse is still an icon of the power of science. After BBC aired a documentary on tissue engineering, the world saw the bizarre animal: The Vacanti Mouse. They implanted the shape of a human ear in the back of a mouse as part of research to better understand how they could help grow body parts for humans. You might have thought that the mouse was genetically engineered, or deformed, or the result of mad scientists 'playing God.' Twenty years ago, Harvard surgeons Joseph and his brother Charles Vacanti, along with MIT engineer Bob Langer, experimented with techniques to create human body parts in the lab. You may have seen it in a textbook or on TV: a mouse with a human ear on its back.

Photos of a mouse