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Inkjet Printer Prints out Human Skin
Anonymous Award writes "Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed a type of inkjet printer that can print human cells. The scientists claim that it will be possible to print 'made-to-measure' tissue and bones to be grown simply by inputting their
dimensions into a computer. But that's not all, the printer's creator claims that the potential of his team's discovery is enormous: 'You could print the scaffolding to create an organ in a day,' well, one day maybe. Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder? Could it lead to a fax machine for complete living organisms?"
If you can't afford this skin surgery, you can always get sponsorship from companies like Intel and let the printer print a non-removable "Intel Outside" on your new skin.
This guy is going to get so excited.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
So you're saying that I can print a new liver? Sweet! *breaks out a 6-pack*
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Now all we need to do is figure out how to bombard a body with slightly greasy solar atoms.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"Where could this technology lead in a 100 years I wonder?"
I don't know... lets see now... How about printer vendors selling toner cartridges for arms and legs for an arm and a leg?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"Team leader Professor Brian Derby says that they are the only team in the world to work out how to print human cells without destroying them in the process."
So, does this mean they're taking skin cells that are already created en masse from cell culturing and reshaping them? I mean, I assume they're not just "printing" new actual cells, right ? The article seems a little vague on this point.
Free Mac Mini
Obviously the local gag at the lab is printing out a huge penis on your coworker's printer. Literally.
I'm sure that owners of these printers will have to pay a heck of a lot for small refill cartridges. Probably almost as much as they pay for ink for their regular printers. :-)
This gives photocopying your bum a disturbing new dimension ...
This was one of the theories exlained to me, years ago in a physics class on how matter transportation may be accomplished...reconstructing by layers.
The downside was you had to be destroyed to find out what you were made of in order to reassemble you.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get 40 cheerleaders and a vat of Cheez-Whiz?
NARF!
</PINKY>
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
When the paper jams in THAT printer.. yikes!
Meet new people, and kill them.
Or the spam industry!
"Print your new, longer pen1s today! No need for vi4gra! Download the new 12 inch model today!"
However i fear the nozzle will get clogged half-way through.
I sure hope so. I'd hate to have an emergency skin graft and get some elbow skin on my forehead...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Will fingerprint security will need to be revised?
That's funny you immediately thought about getting a new pen1s. I for one thought about printing out different types of girls.
This is great news in making the reconstruction of tissue cheaper and more reliable through automation. The main enabling tech here is the phase of the process where patient skin cells are harvested, multiplied, and returned to them. They don't necessarily have to wait in a hospital while that labwork is performed. These kinds of autologous donations, donating tissue to oneself, can become much more common.
Personal bloodbank accounts should already be the norm, with risky behaviors insured only when blood is stored; the bank can charge "interest", putting some of the collected blood into the pool, along with aging blood in the accounts. That kind of preemptive storage will be prudent in general, when larger scale economics bring prices down. So I'd put some liver and kidney tissue in the bank when I started drinking, and start growing a replacement when a medical exam showed my original organ on the way out. Sperm or possibly egg cells might turn out to be a good source of stemcells to keep "on file", a hedge against later tumors or other disease/damage.
A lot of the anticipated benefits of "cloning" will be delivered by autologous donation. Most of the tech is already available, for several organs. This inkjet system will harness all that momentum, and perhaps make it available (and affordable) for much less serious health crises. Their combination has the potential to change injuries and disease from crises to mere problems.
--
make install -not war
You'll never get cirrhosis with a half-assed effort like that. Grab a case at least.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Another problem with skin grafts is that they motherfucking hurt! Jesus H. God do they motherfucking hurt! I spent eight weeks in a hospital in 2003 and ended up with about 200 square inches of donor site and goddamnit it hurt! I ended up having my left leg amputated below the knee because it had been crushed and my tibia and fibula were broken in three places and even after that I'd have to say that the skin grafts were the most painful thing that happened to me. Any surgical procedure where the doctor describes it as "We take this device called a dermatome, which looks like a rotary cheese grater, and run it back and forth over the donor site to harvest a thin layer of skin" is not going to be any fun to go through and afterwards the donor sites are red and raw like a serious case of road rash.
If they could print up enough skin, quickly enough it would be a huge, huge, huge advance. I wish them the best of luck.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I bet the cartridges cost an arm and a leg.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
But there is some serious change in the wind from this kind of tech.
Just printing tissue could be huge. Not just for medicine. But how about you start printing Big macs. No more raising a cow. Just harvest some cells and start a culture farm that in turn prints out big mac patties based on muscle tissue of the approprite parts.
Print any kind of meat. Or other food matter. No mass salughter of animals any more or having to raise them on a massive scale.
Not against animals beint eaten.. Trust me I come from the
"I love animals. try to eat at least one a day"
School of thought. But this would be a boon for a country like Japan where they don't have room to raise large herds of livestock and have to import.
This would also alleviate alot the fears of things like Mad Cow disease. You could also print any kind of cellular matter. Print a healthy microwave dinner in animal shapes for kids in their favorit colors.
Food supplies no longer linked to harvest and weather but linked to energy and the ability to induce cell growth.
That is just one possibility in addition to the cloning and organ possibilities. There was a bit in Pop Sci this month where someone has rigged a supply of cement as an 'ink' to a massive 'ink jet' head on a three D motion scaffolding to print buildings. Imagine a house complete with plumbing and electricity printed in a day or two.
Star Trek hypo sprays. Ink Jet Technology. Already asthma style inhalers with injet dispersal are being eyed as a medicine delivery method over shots and even the possibility of direct atomization in to the blood stream ala hypo spray.
Plastic fast prototyping technology. Print a cell phone cover, Comb, Toothbrush, ziplock bags and any number of other household common items. Slightly more complex would actually be able to print circut boards and buttons. Remote Controls, calculators. Even if the tech never made it to the home it can easily revolutionize manufacturing to an extent not seen since the industrial revolution. "Grandpa did people really used to sit on a assembly line all day long putting widgets together ???" The question there is only speed and economy of scale.
and not only that but the ability to alter the design on the fly without any major retooling. Man it is exciting. Course there is the issue of what the masses of factory workers would do if their jobs were largely eliminated.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Hell, man. Who needs the actual *girl*?
"What's the useless fleshy skin around a vagina called?"
"A Woman"
Where's the -100, Sexist bastard option?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
the ultimate test would be to print the girl from "weird science", preferably with a glandular disorder causing nymphomania