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Why the sigh?

Genital regeneration may lead to the restoration of parts lost via genital mutilation. And science looks a lot more appealing than this foreskin restoration method. NSFW.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the tissue used for this type of 3d printing is sourced from genital mutilation. In the United States, neonatal foreskins are harvested and used for commercial products like skin grafts, anti-wrinkle creams, and tissue samples for research. Not surprisingly, this stuff isn't cheap.

By the way, I'm not suggesting that this happens 100% of the time but the fact that it happens at all and is perfectly legal is pretty disturbing. If harvesting healthy, normal, erogenous tissue from living human beings without their consent doesn't scream "human rights violation" then I don't know what does.

It should be noted that the liver cells used in this device are most certainly cancer cells- the HepG2/C3A line was originally grown from a hepatocellular carcinoma cell taken out of a 15-year old boy. You can buy some here in fact.

Use of these cancer cells in an artificial liver does create the risk of transfer to the patient, but the cells in question will be suspended in a collagen matrix, and is kept separate from the blood by a dialysis-type semipermeable membrane. Contracting cancer from this device requires that the dialysis membrane fail, that cancer cells get out of the collagen and into the filtrate, that the cancer cells are not caught by the dual membrane cell filter, and that once in the body, a cancer cell from a line noted for low tumorigenic potential implants somewhere and begins to form a tumor. Not impossible, but it is unlikely.

It seems too easy to play the "OMG, government overeaching!" card here.

Look at what actually happened. He created an art project designed to look like a biological warfare project. His whole POINT was to make it look like it was dangerous. Having his house searched should be a sign that he succeeded in his goals. If the police walk in to find something that exactly replicates a biological warfare setup, I should hope that they stop and call the experts before casually dismissing it. The only difference between his project and something deadly was the fact that he used harmless bacteria. The difference in bacteria was completely invisible to an officer on the scene and possibly even to a biology expert without testing. He should take it as a compliment that his art project worked well enough to fool the police. The search of his house was definitely erring in the right direction, especially given that there have been biological attacks through the mail in the US.

The mail fraud charge is a closer case, but it's far from obvious based on a one-sided article that it's baseless. The American Type Culture Collection is a research system, not a toy. They provide cultures that range from harmless to deadly, and they understandably don't sell their wares to any idiot who walks in off the street. There's a reason why I can't just all up and place an order for 50 ml of HIV. Even something that's only mildly dangerous -- maybe E. coli -- can result in some nasty accidents if mis-handled. To order from the ATCC, "You must be able to demonstrate that your expertise and your institution's facilities are appropriate for handling biological materials." That seems like a pretty good common-sense restriction. If you don't have the appropriate facilities to handle biological materials the ATCC won't sell them to you. If our artist friend lied in order to trick the ATCC into thinking that he worked for a university that had biological facilities then that seems like mail fraud to me. Sure, in this case the whole thing got shut down before anybody got hurt, but that doesn't lessen the importance of maintaining the integrity of the ATCC system. Saying "he shouldn't be punished, nobody got hurt" is like saying "I shouldn't get a speeding ticket, I didn't hit anybody." The restriction on the ATCC is legitimate and he broke it, apparently by lying in an attempt to deceive them. That's fraud if true.

Let's see a more balanced source.

Whaddaya mean, what's next?

293 cells are virus transformed - so they are fine for research, but medically useless.

Where do you think the seed stock for that anthrax came from?

ATCC, a Washington non-profit

They even got special permission from the US government - as you would, if you wanted to export that kind of thing.

"Damn" is right!

See:

http://phage.atcc.org/cgi-bin/searchengine/directd etail.cgi?collection=ce&atccNum=CCL-2

Only $167.00.

Could it be that this woman is the single largest human in the world with millions of her reproducing cells, even being sold on the Internet?

//Begin unsubstatiated rumor//
In the early days, someone tested all the human cells that people were growing in culture and found *all* the cells came from the same person. This one freak mutants cells could be grown in a culture, and no-one elses could. The mutants cells were contaminating all the 'other' cultures.
//End unsubstantiated rumor//