Slashdot Mirror
Printing Replacement Body Parts
Deep Penguin sends in a piece that appeared in The Economist a couple of weeks back about a developing technology to "print" body parts for transplant. "A US and an Australian company have developed the $200,000 machine, which works by depositing stem cells and a 'sugar-based hydrogel' scaffolding material. (The stem cells are harvested from a transplant patient's own fat and bone marrow, to avoid rejection down the line.) The companies are Organovo, from San Diego, specializing in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. The initial targets are skin, muscle, and 'short stretches of blood vessels,' which they hope to have available for human implantation within five years. Down the line, they expect the technology could even print directly into the body, bypassing the in-vitro portion of the current process."
They took my gene stapler.
Printing penis jokes in 3, 2, 1...
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
"Surprise Her !!!, Print an enlarged Pen**, 80% off" must be blocked
With a new scalp?
This mouse called dibs 8 years ago.
Seriously though, this certainly isn't the first time this has been done. Previous methods also used similar 3D printing techniques, except that the printed organ was a "dud" that was impregnated (injected and suspended in fluids, as I remember) with cells, instead of the organ being printed in one pass.
Not that this isn't very interesting, it's just not as new as they make it seem.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Doctor I don't know what hapenned, it was a complete accident but I've somehow jabbed a screwdriver through my penis!
The trauma has caused some kind of cell shrinkage, I have no idea why it looks like it's only 3" but I can assure you it was 9" this morning.
Fire up the printer baby!
think 5th Element... now everyone can get their own Lee-Loo!
How long before I can print my very own live copy of Milla Jovovich? Can't let Bruce Willis have all the fun.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?
You can't take the sky from me.
Being type 1 (insulin dependant) diabetic, the idea of having a new pancreas 'printed' is pretty appealing. I asked a doctor why they can't be transplanted like other organs and he said that it's because they're too fragile and would likely be damaged during the transplant process. It'd be great if printing a new one would work.
One can dream...
Apart from it looking horrible, aliasing stairways are the antithesis to stability of an object. E.g. a bone with aliasing would be much less stable. And don’t even think about lying on it and not causing painful pressure points.
No thanks. I like my body parts casted or grown.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
One Milla Jovovich please.
Yay me!
No doubt if the machine is $200,000 the print cartridges will be $600,000 and still only use three quarters of its ink!
Anthony Atala presented this (and much more!) on TEDMED recently.
Awesome.
What would, in my opinion, be truly interesting is if this printer device can be used with beef cells to produce artificial steaks (etc.). This could potentially remove the agricultural overhead of growing the meat, while reducing prices, increasing availability, dissolving concerns of inhumanity, and (possibly) skittering past some of the vegetarian reservations. Furthermore, there's no integration issues trying to put the product back into a live and functioning body!
Bet they're pricey too
"And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
Now you can have your brains and eat them too....
Mod parent up! In fact, using bioprinting to make food should be a good proving ground for technology, as well as way to make it cheap and ubiquitous.
"which works by depositing stem cells and a 'sugar-based hydrogel' scaffolding material."
I bet it's still cheaper to print with than HP No. 96 Black.
Cruise TT
I can imagine to have one of these plugged via USB and some spammers keep sending me organisms.
Land on a distant planets and start printing people, seeds, etc..
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
mention 5th element or printer cartridge costs yet?
Just wondering.
And to think, I thought my printer's consumables were high!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wrote a story once where this was done (here. I kind of got tired of so many SF stories and movies solving traumatic injury with some sort of magical "healing tank" (maybe with effortless "nanobots") that I wondered to myself what sort of effort would really be needed to put someone together from just a bunch of pieces.
The closest similar stories I found were the beginning of "Neon", by Harlan Ellison in 1973, and an early chapter of "Count Zero" by William Gibson.
Down the line, they expect the technology could even print directly into the body, bypassing the in-vitro portion of the current process.
Ow! Paper jam!
Your sex isn't determined by your genetalia, but by the DNA in every cell in your body. Still, I amagine that some day there will be such a thing as a true sex change operation, but I think it will be far in the future.
Meh, that's one definition, and it's one that almost all transgender persons would completely deny. Furthermore, it's not a socially useful definition since humans aren't nearly as capable of detecting the chromosomes of others as we are the shape of their genitalia. Sex and gender aren't so black and white. What do you think most people would think someone with Swyer syndrome should be called?
Plus, under your definition, what is your sex if some of your body is XY and some of it is XX after a transplant? Take an XY male, replace his genitalia with a vagina, uterus, and ovaries and give him other tissue grafts (like breast tissue) from a XX gene donor, and what do you have? Is that person male? Female? Neither? Both? How much of a person would you have to replace to get a sex-change in your definition, and how little of the original in needed remain to prevent the switch?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Meh, that's one definition, and it's one that almost all transgender persons would completely deny.
That's true, and for a transgender induvidual a cosmetic change would be beneficial. But Medically and scientifically, if you have an X and Y chromosome you're male, and if you have two Xs you're female.
Furthermore, it's not a socially useful definition since humans aren't nearly as capable of detecting the chromosomes of others as we are the shape of their genitalia. Sex and gender aren't so black and white.
Also true; secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts and facial hair, are what we see (I think shaving is kind of gay). Geriatrics seem (to me at least) to look androgous.
Take an XY male, replace his genitalia with a vagina, uterus, and ovaries and give him other tissue grafts (like breast tissue) from a XX gene donor, and what do you have? Is that person male? Female?
That's a very good point. If Sally dies and I get her heart, my new heart's cells will be female. Will I be me, or will I be Sally? You're right; when it's all said and done, it's the brain that matters.
Free Martian Whores!
After all the political posturing and debate over government funding for the use of embryonic stem cells for research, the private sector comes along and shows us where the action really is.
Kinda makes you wonder if some academics deliberately pick areas of study with the longest term payoff possible in order to extend the length of their grant funding. After all, once the discovery is made, the researcher has to find a new area of study.