Slashdot Mirror
Print Yourself a Femur
Scrooge919 writes "Newscientist is running an article about a new 'bone printer' that can be used to replace segments of broken bones. A large segment could be fabricated in about an hour and would be able to support the person's weight. Over the course of about 18 months, the section is absorbed by the body and replaced with real bone."
Subject: [ADV] Print yourself a bigger Penis!!!!
Boy, if you think those InkJet printer cartridges are expensive now.....
I just spent $7800 for the hospital to put 2 screw in my arm, and am still being told I will most likely never straighten my arm out again.
I would gladly have spent 3 or 4 times that, to just improve my odds of throwing a baseball once more.
I can't wait for Star Trek style medical prcedure where a broken bone is just an annoyance until the good doctor can run an LED flashlight over my skin./p
Pretty Pictures!
That this technology is probably wonderfully applicable and needed now but won't be approved by the FDA for years, years to come.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
There is probably a parking lot full of fire hydrants. Not a cat in sight of the place. And probably any human around the place has protective knee covers.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
lol that would be cool!
we could really BE darth maul for halloween
..until body parts become upgradable.
"I just stopped the elevator doors from closing!"
The problem? FDA won't let the doctors leave it in there. They just got to put it in place and take a few pics before removing it again. So the woman still has a weakened jawbone, despite the fact that the technology exists to help her.
At first, I was like "Sweet! I've always wanted a furry little animal with a long tail and monkey-like qualities!"
But then I realized I was thinking about a Lemur. When will someone release a Lemur machine?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
What the fuck does that mean?!
And yes, I did use a thesaurus.
Now when you have a dog, don't dig up a corpse for that bone, just print one out!
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Imagine, there was a time in the USA before the FDA even existed (1930 to be exact). More recently, there was a time when medicine was a private industry in the USA, and people didn't give a rats ass about getting the government's approval for medical devices (1966).
Somehow, in 37 years out of the 227 years this country has existed, the nation now thinks that medical advances can only exist after a lengthy approval process, complete with beurocratic red tape, medicare approval, and gov overhead.
Yes, the government oversees the distribution and purity of drugs, the quality of foodstuffs, and qualifications of our doctors. All that is fine and good. But why have we let ourselves be roped into holding back life-altering discoveries that work just because it doesn't have some commission's stamp on it?
I thought it said Lemur, not Femur. Haha! :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
On a related note, check this older article.
It is about printing tissues with modified inkjet printers, a prospect which seems even more fascinating than artificial bone replacements.
Check :
Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab
Wonderful science.
It takes time to complete FDA studies, and even then it's often not enough. Side effects can take decades, or even generations to show up.
It seems to me that the ideal application for manufactured bones would be dentistry. After all, teeth are by far the most commonly damaged or destroyed bones. Of course,there are artificial implants right now, but I'm sure many people would prefer to have "real" teeth instead.
My only question: Is this technique applicable to teeth, or is the mouth too hostile an environment?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
leg. Or at least the part below the knee that I no longer have. This could be a good thing for a lot of people though, I've met a lot of people who have had bone grafts and they're not pleasant (if you think about it bone and graft are two words that just don't go together) and they don't always work.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
The FDA does serve a purpose, Thalidomide is a great example. Ever see a person in their 20's or 30's with an underdevolped limb? Most likely they were born in another country where Thalidomide was allowed as a treatment for morning sickness. Why wasn't it allowed in the US, because no studies had been performed which measured its affect on the pregnancy. Thank you FDA!
Oh yeah and guess who isn't a big fan of FDA regulation? Orrin Hatch. Turns out Utah is home to many of the big health supplement companies. The FDA has no jurisdiction over them, so they are allowed to make all sorts of false promises about their products and then sell you whichever mix of ginsing and ephedrine they wish.
Thanks, Eric. I had to deal with someone close to me who was essentially addicted to ephedrine through daily use of "Mah Huang" aka ephedra sinica, a natural herbal supplement, the active ingredient of which is ephedrine -- which is no less harmful than crank. It can be just as deadly, too -- an overdose can be fatal. Way, Way bad!
pseudephedrine is the manufactured ingredient, the main ingredient in Sudafed, a leading decongestant. The same people that wouldn't take a handful of Sudafed will go ahead and take the equivalent dose of mah huang, because it's natural and organic. So is deadly nightshade. Not a great idea.
While it would be a shame if every herbal tea company were regulated into oblivion, its also clear that some "natural organics" can be quite dangerous (tobacco, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote buttons...)-- not to mention all kinds of unnatural inorganic treatments people try. Prior to the founding of the FDA there were some truly dangerous quack treatments -- electrical shocks to the nads for STD's for example. Unscientific, dangerous and quite scary stuff!
Uh, ephedrine is much weaker than methamphetamine. That's why people go through the trouble of making meth - often using ephedrine as a base. (Which is a large part of the reason the Drug Warriors get so bent out of shape about ephedrine.)
Exactly. Taking a little Mah Huang tea or a little Sudafed to clear your sinuses is generally safe. I prefer the tea, since you're also getting soothing warm liquids and herbs usually contain secondary substances that help balance out the action; I also find the use of herbs more aesthetically appealing. YYMV.
Taking large doses of either to get "high", or taking it constantly as a weight loss drug, is stupid. But it's your body and none of the government's business.
Psilocybin is quite safe, it's estimated that it would take several pounds of mushrooms to cause an overdose. Peyote is pretty safe, though I did read one account of a fatality from vomiting-related bleeding in an alcoholic man. (By "safety", I refer to the pharmacological actions of the drugs. Taking a psychdelic drug can result in a very intense experience, for which one should be psychologically prepared - treat all drugs, from chocolate to morphine, with respect. And don't do stupid things like drive while under the influence of any drug.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I SINCERELY hope you got a second and third opinion before you went through with it. If not, get one now anyway before the healing process is complete!
You ever see those NASCAR folks get smashed into bags of broken bones and smushed cartiledge, only to return a few months later and race? Where bones are concerned, they can fix almost anything.
Case-in-point, an associate of mine has a husband who got his hand smashed to pieces by a giant stone block. The first doctor said he would never have much of a grip again, would have to learn to be left handed, would never be able to drive a stick-shift again, etc. His very wise wife would not except this. They spent a week looking for a top rated surgeon and they found a team of 2. They completely reconstructed his hand. He is 95% back to normal, still in physical therapy, and a full 100% recovery is expected. Had they not demanded and sought out a better, second opinion, he would have been crippled for life. So if you haven't sought hard for a surgeon who can fully repair you, please do it right now, today, before the healing is complete.
Wellll....what you're describing is an attempt at knowledgable and responsible use. Some of that knowledge, which gives you understanding of how careful you must be, as you have described, is gained in the very type of clinical trials required by the FDA approval process. Unfortunately, where clinical trials are perceived to be biased and regulation perceived to be unnecessarily draconian (criminalised, for example), the only way users of those substances find out the real level of care that needs to be exercised is through trial and error on human subjects, and the results of their "experiments" are only be conveyed through rumour and anecdote-- the legendary bad trips you hear about, people winding up institutionalised or dead, through uh, not exercising due caution.
Even in the unregulated herbal preparations, the quantity of the active ingredient can vary wildly from batch to batch, which can make responsible use more difficult. Regulation would ensure more consistency from batch to batch, along with published guidelines on responsible use (no different than the dosage recommendations on a box of aspirin!) which can prevent others from unknowingly using the herbal preparation in a way that would harm themselves and others. So, in a lot of ways we actually agree on the fundamental issue.
I used to pop a couple Sudafed myself, once or twice a semester, to help study--a cup of mah huang tea to clear your head: that sounds even more reasonable! But if you've ever had to be the responsible family member dealing with a parent or sibling who has abused ephedrine, alcohol and other natural, organic and/or legal psychtropics irresponsibly over a long period of time, you might feel differently about the importance of the importance of testing their effects (particularly the long-term effects of prolonged use!) and regulating their use.
Someone who has become inured to rather massive daily doses of a tincture of mah huang is doing physical damage to their heart, has developed a physical addiction to the stuff, and does a lot of social and emotional damage to the people around them. And they can become violent. The constant sleep deprivation alone would be enough to induce serious psychosis. And yet, because it's "natural and organic" they think they can take as much of it as their addiction demands. There's no warning on the label!
I think you'll agree that the heavy-handedness of the FDA's approach to some of these substances only polarises and politicises the issue (and unfortunately they're particularly fond of slippery-slope arguments and other logical fallacies in their debate, which doesn't serve to convince anybody!)-- but at least the public debate gets the idea out to people that they do need to be extremely cautious. If the FDA rather conducted a campaign to distribute credible and balanced information on the basis of unbiased clinical trials regarding some of these substances, they might be far more effective in pursuading people to exercise an appropriate level of caution, and thus serve the public interest more effectively.
I have no problem with the FDA, or anyone else, testing their effects. (Well,I have issues about animal testing, and there are other research ethical issues that can arise, but that's outside the scope of this discussion.) Gathering and publishing accurate data is a good thing. Nor do I have any issue with them educating the public, or regulating the production of products to ensure that something sold as "100mg of Qwertyian" really is 100mg of Qwertyian.
Regulating the use of a drug, however, means stepping into people's private lives. Keep you laws off my body, thank you very much.
My box of "Traditional Medicinals Breathe Easy " tea has several paragraphs of warnings on the box. So responsible manufacturers are taking appropriate steps.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well,I have issues about animal testing
;)
I have no problem with Animal Testing. Without it, we would have no way of knowing which college to admit them to.
Me too, I could use a pair of hips. Unfortunately,
with joint replacements, the bone is only part
of the story. You need cartelidge and preferable some
good ligaments as well - stuff that goes bye-bye
after artificial joint replacement.
still, one can hope.
Until I can print out my own Milla Jovovich replica like in that Fifth Element movie. Mmmm...Supreme Being...(drool,slobber).