Interesting medical miracle

From Yahoo! News: in a weird-sounding operation I've never heard of before (but, oddly enough, it makes sense to me), a tooth has been transformed into a working cornea for an Irishman.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on [the Irish patient] McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

The first operation lasted ten hours and the second five hours.

"It is pretty heavy going," McNichol said. "There was a 65 percent chance of me getting any sight.

"Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things," McNichol said.

Isn't it amazing that some parts of the body can be used in this way to fix other parts?