By salamander, drake, and the power that was undine: Stem-sell edition

"Hmm," said absolutely no-one, "I wonder which researchers publish through BioAccent Journals -- noted for their unorthodox style of spamming for submissions, which stresses their lack of recognition and consequent lack of standards. Also for a logo that was inspired by 1950s designs for space stations."

Wonder no longer, convenient sockpuppet, for we found this paper stuck in the Stupid Filter, on account of the title, which appears to have stuttered:
Co-Electroporation? Frog eggs?
Now many ways have been advanced for transforming human tissue cells back into stem cells, tabula-rasing their epigenetic memories of specialising into a single niche. Obokata stressed cells with weak citric acid[we were unable to replicate this with lemon juice and oysters]. Schneider introduced a stress technique of dropping the cells out a fifth-storey window. But this plan, from Sergei Baylian of the company Bioquark, is especially cunning... it is to subject the cells to electroshock therapy, in close propinquity to frog spawn.
For the pluripotency of the frog eggs is transferable. Their capacity and eagerness to divide and differentiate into all those specialised roles that collaborate in being a frog, it is embodied, as a kind of protoplasmic hormone, which leaks out of the oocytes when the ECT turns their membranes permeable; then leaking into the equally-permeable human cells nearby. This is some serious Mad Sciencing and here at the Mad Scientist Anti-Defamation League we are nodding our heads in cautious approval.
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Clik here to view.Baylian has a patent on this process, and another for using frog squeezin's to cure cancers and regenerate organs or limbs in the manner of a salamander. And from there it is a short slide down the slippery slope to the current ReAnima Project -- a joint venture between Bioquark and Revita Life Sciences in India -- which is the plan to regenerate whole brains after disease or misadventure turns them into mashed potato. YouImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.might have opted to start with growing something less ambitious like a new foreskin, but that is why you are not a Mad Scientist, all Hubris* and castle-dungeon laboratory and theremin music on the soundtrack and the headlines and the generous cheques from investors. "Toujours l'audace!" quoth Danton, meaning "Always drive an Audi".

This is naturally of interest to us at Riddled Research Laboratory, with our extensive experience in vat-growing giant brains. The way the project is described in the Indian Clinical Trials registry, Revita Life Sciences is the majority partner. It will supply the heart-beating but brain-dead cadavers for revival (for Dr Himanshu Bansal has access to his own research facilitycharity hospital for poor masses, with its own IRB). Bioquark will stem-cellify the mesenchymal tissue samples, for injection into the spine (in the hope that the implanted cells will find their way to the half-empty skull, recognise their surroundings, and transform into axons and substantia nigra and Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.microcolumns and astroglial and microglial support cells; and not into teeth, say, or new foreskins). Also for spinal-tap injection, Bioquark will supply Bioquantine-A, which is to say the rejuvenating memory-wiping "bioactive peptides" or frog squeezin's concentrate. Because what could go wrong?

But that is not all, for Revita will also supply lasers for Brain Coloured-Light Stimulation and Median-Nerve Stimulation,* with no pressing rationale, except that the lasers were already sitting out in the corridor getting in the way, so they might as well be included in the Multimodality Protocol:

• 1. Bioactive peptides (Bioquantine 5 percent solution via intrathecal pump
• 2. Intrathecal stem cells
• 3. Median nerve stimulation (MNS)
• 4. Intravenous and transcranial laser stimulation

Further examination reveals that Revita pimp a broad spectrum of the Scammocopoeia -- hyperbaric oxygen, Naturopathy, Healing Electromagnetic Pulses, and griftolicious Ayurvedic Piffle. It is possible that their methods are unsound.

The ReAnima team opted to ditto the details of the clinical trial into the US registry. This led people to infer that the trial has US National Institute of Health sanction... some people who should have known better, but also Sarah Knapton, Science Writer for the Daily Torygraph:

The ReAnima Project has just received approach from an Institutional Review Board at the National Institutes of Health in the US and in India, and the team plans to start recruiting patients immediately.
The ReAnima Project has just received approval from the National Institutes of Health in the US and plans to start recruiting patients immediately.

First link is to the Wayback Archive, as Knapton's mistake went down the memory hole as soon as it was called to her attention; second is to her syndicated version.

Naturally the NIH-approval fabrication was baked into the story when other churnalists recycled it for their own human-centipede news-spigots, in the approved one-paragraph-per-sentence style. But that is not to say that they are all lazy unthinking mimeograph machines. They vary in the pop-culture comparison used to ease the readership into unfamiliar intellectual territory.

We know what you’re thinking: “Great – zombies.”
From Lazarus to Mary Shelley’s monster to George A. Romero’s hordes,
It sounds like the logline from the recent sci-fi horror movie, The Lazarus Effect.

Knapton herself is more highbrow and upmarket:

It sounds straight out of Game of Thrones.

There are more obvious and relevant cultural artifacts that you could be using, people.
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Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW.
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* When working for mad scientists, Hubris are only ever present in groups, like Oompa-Loompas. You never encounter a single Hubri. No-one knows why.

** The idea of stimulating the median nerve in the wrist as a cure for central brain injury appears to arise from chiropractic. Originally it involved electric stimulation, but lasers are more theatrical and sciencey, with more spooky theremin music.

Revita's clinical priorities are informative:
ANTIAGING
COSMETIC


• FACIAL REJUVENATION
• BREAST AUGMENTATION
• BUTT ENHANCEMENT

SEXUAL


• PENILE ENLARGEMENT
• VAGINAL TIGHTENING
• ERECTILE DYSYNCTION