CNN EXLUSIVE: SALAMANDER SURGERY MAY HELP WAR VETS REGROW BODY PARTS.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) -- Last week in an operating room in Texas, a wounded American soldier underwent a history-making procedure that could help him regrow the finger that was lost to a bomb attack in Baghdad last year.


Army Sgt. Shiloh Harris is wheeled into surgery to undergo the experimental treatment to regrow what's left of his finger.

1 of 3 Army Sgt. Shiloh Harris' doctors applied specially formulated powder to what's left of the finger in an effort to do for wounded soldiers what salamanders can do naturally: replace missing body parts.

If it sounds like science fiction, the lead surgeon agreed.

"It is. But science fiction eventually becomes true, doesn't it?" said Dr. Steven Wolf of Brooke Army Medical Center.

Harris' surgery is part of a major new medical study of "regenerative medicine" being pursued by the Pentagon and several of the nation's top medical facilities, including the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic. So far nearly $250 million has been dedicated to the research.

Air Force Technical Sgt. Israel Del Toro is one of the wounded vets who might one day benefit from this research. He was injured by a bomb in Afghanistan. Both his hands were badly burned. On his left hand, what was left of his fingers fused together. "You know in the beginning when I first got hurt, I told them just cut it off. So I can get some function," Del Toro said. His doctors did not cut off his injured left arm. And since that injury, advancements in burn and amputation treatment mean he may one day be able to use his fingers again