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Miniature Human Livers Grown In Lab
Zothecula writes "In the quest to grow replacement human organs in the lab, livers are no doubt at the top of many a barfly's wish list. With its wide range of functions that support almost every organ in the body and no way to compensate for the absence of liver function, the ability to grow a replacement is also the focus of many research efforts. Now, for the first time, researchers have been able to successfully engineer miniature livers in the lab using human liver cells."
I'm just wondering...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So if they make me a miniature liver, does that mean I can only drink those little 8oz beers?
So is Jack in the Box going to have a mini liver and onions to pair with the mini sirloin burgers with another awesome ad campaign to back in tup?
The first round of drinks is on me!
Now we just have to find a bunch of mini humans to try these out on ... I mean, we have to have clinical trials, right?
Replacing hepatic function is a wonderful thing, but in order to have the new livers not be rejected, they should either be grown from a small donation of the recipient, or have the primordial DNA blasted away in the donor cells, and have it replaced with DNA from the intended recipient. Lots of people have died from not having a functioning liver, and being able to replace a broken/dysfunctional one with a new one is serious big-time news.
These things will mutate and go on the attack. You get an implant, and it will turn your entire body into a giant liver. The only way to control it is LOTS of alcohol..
First on the list is livers? I think not. Like the rest of us men, they wish for one thing: larger drinks.
Here's a TED talk from Alan Russell on the methods and details of this technology.
crazy dynamite monkey
The skills needed to grow one of these can't be cheap and that's before you've added on the RnD costs.
insert irony tag here
Does this mean we can drink more now?
K Man
How often am I going to have to swap this out? Is there a MDBF (mean drinks before failure)?
Next to the wine coolers and six-packs.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
can we have your liver then?
Won't help you. Their dicks will still be larger than yours.
This calls for miniature fava beans and miniature bottles of Chianti (made from miniature grapes).
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Well, it looks like these mini livers put us just slightly under two orders of magnitude in size away before getting sufficient capacity to sustain a human (at the mentioned minimum of 30% normal function).
Or does it? in many cases, liver disease is the result of a chronic and slow destruction that does not remove all capacity at a stroke; rather, the person slowly loses capacity until at some point it becomes insufficient to sustain life.
I am hoping a partial transplant of even a micro-sized lobe might be sufficient to bump them back up to capacity. If we can get a big enough liver-oid to provide a few years function, that might be enough for an elderly patient to live out the rest of their normal life-span (or at least normal "health-span").
I, for one, welcome our new miniature liver overlords.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
these mini livers, to share the load?
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
Larry Hagman took it. He's got five of them now! And three hearts! We didn't want to give them to him but he overpowered us!
Miniature Human Livers Grown In Lab
If only I'd stuck to the miniature bottles of vodka all these years.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
These will make excellent hors d'oeuvres.
"Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power." -- James Madison
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
Synthetic organs from A Gift from Earth.
"liverbeasts", "heartbeasts"... heh. Cute. Now if we could just get safe Bussard ramjets (or maybe hyperdrive).
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Seen on a billboard.
Don't ask me why I was paying attention to the billboard instead of the road.
I said LASERS! Sharks with LASERS... Not livers. LASERS!
That's great, but we need livers for regular-sized humans.
these should be good for a little drinking.
I'm not a doctor or medically trained. Since the liver is the one organ that can repair itself, wouldn't that mean that someone who needs a liver transplant would not be in a position to provide the starter liver cells to grow a replacement? If so, then it would have to be a donor, and anti-rejection drugs would need to be taken. So it's a way to increase the supply of livers available for transplant, not a way to grow one's own replacement. Still important, but not the gateway to immortality.
At first glance, I thought that read, miniature humans grown in lab. I thought, cool..do want!
But what about the rest of us?
Leprechauns rejoice!
Can't we just print them up with a 3D printer anyway?
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Similar things are being done for a long time. I noticed that scientific advances noted here recently are mostly old news. Like the perforin CD8 T cell report. If someone releases a story it should be checked for relevance and significance.
At least, fake livers won't be in highest demand from *this* crowd.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Liver happens to be edible and quite tasty. If they manage to grow these livers in a vat on a commercial scale, they could significantly help with the world hunger problem. And, of course, the factory farm problem.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...now we can grow livers like grapes.
Now all we need are miniature humans (preferably grown in Liverpool) and we'll be set.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Miniature Human Livers Grown In Lab... wonder how well they'd stand up to my miniature whiskey bottle collection?
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
Don't worry they'll be hot swappable. Why do you think they made them miniature? You'll be able to have a Redundant Array of Miniature Livers, or RAML.
The easiest and most practical organ that can "grown" this way, without stem cells, is liver. It has extreme regenerative properties, higher than most other tissues. From their results it seems they might be able to grow large enough samples that once implanted, they should grow more and start functioning enough to keep the patient alive with some care.
As fantastic as this is, it still bothers me that scientists always favor rats and pigs for these kind of things. I'd be happy to be alive and all but I wouldn't be crazy about being part rodent...
Why can't they make livers and stuff from tigers or lions? Or sharks??
Waiting for you by the bridge
Based on their results, there's no reason to believe it won't scale up just fine. The small size was for the practicalities of research, not due to fundamental limitations of the technique.
From the article they describe taking an animal liver, cleaning out the parts and refilling with human stuff. Human Liverwurst?
Mean drinks? If you mean tequila sunrise then I guess somewhere between 3 or 4.
OW! I said I was sorry! Ow! OW! Stop, please! OW!
I have Porphyria (2 kinds, wheeeeee!), it totally ruined my life, well, I'm lucky to survive below the poverty level, so I Hope I live long enough to see this become real for a poor person.
Not likely tho ...
How often am I going to have to swap this out? Is there a MDBF (mean drinks before failure)?
Haha, I really like that term, I've been an engineering student too long I suppose because that literally made me laugh out loud.
This is really great stuff...if livers can be "grown" instead of, or in conjunction with "harvested", the potential to stave off the effects of liver diseases is awesome. Hopefully the process can be extended to include just about any organ.
Depending upon the cost and availability of the techology, the ethical implications are astounding.
- All kidding aside (from the title), what happens if/when "big corporations" get their way with their legislative whores and turn it into big business and the only "affordable" option to stay alive is to put yourself in debt for the reaminder of your now extended life?
- What if the recipient is terminal and the organ can't be grown within the time they're estimated to live?
- What if the technology/process is expensive and can't be offered to everyone? Which national health-care bureaucrat/death panel decides who receives one and who doesn't?
- What happens when an elderly celebrity "bumps" a younger "paying customer" (pick a reason) to get higher priority to grow their organ?
- What if the process can be combined with genetic manipulation so that the replacement organ can be implanted without any inherent pre-disposition to genetic disease (assuming no external influences)?
It bottles the mind.
yeah i just feel like being controversial today...
so were these livers CREATED? or did they EVOLVE?
Yeah, trick question, but rather than requiring an answer, its just there to make you think...
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Are they small enough to wrap in bacon?
Perfect. Now all we need to do is shrinkray the patient and medical staff, implant the minature liver and regrow them.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
and miniature chiantis?
How many people know that line and have no idea what Chianti is? (an Italian wine, BTW)
Say hello to my little friend!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Blame Ronald McDonald.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/246239/cultural_body_size_trend_japanese_women.html?cat=69
Cultural Body Size Trend: Japanese Women Getting Curvier
Japanese women aren't usually known for being curvy. The typical Japanese woman in most of our imaginations is stick thin and completely flat with no curves. The only option was for plastic surgery which is very common even for girls as young as twelve. They would get breast enhancements called 'gummi bears.'
But recently more and more younger women are popping out with the natural "bon-kyu-bon" look meaning big breast, small waist and big hips. Now retailers in all major shopping districts rush to replace their clothing to fit a new generation of curvier women.
Not so long ago most Japanese stores didn't even stock large sizes but recently more women have been complaining that the sizes in local stores are too small for them. This has made a big change in the clothing industry of Japan. Juicy Couture, known for its figure-hugging terrycloth tracksuits, opened one of its biggest stores in Tokyo last year. Tokyo's high-end Isetan department store, which used to relegate its bigger sizes to one corner, now prominently features larger items from designers such as Ralph Lauren, Diane von Furstenberg and DKNY.
Before, the bras were the padded types. Now the best-sellers that are new to Japan are called "Love Bras," they show cleavage with less padding, meant for curvier women in their 20s.
This could be good news for most Americans who often go to Japan. Before it was almost impossible to find sizes that fit westernized bodies but now bigger sizes are showing up in stores for people to buy.
In the media more bustier women are popping out too. Before it was all about the cute and innocent look but recently pop stars such as Koda Kumi have been keep up with their fans and the other young adults by wearing sexy metallic bras and not much else.
How do Japanese women physically differ than before? Today, the average Japanese woman's hips, at 35 inches, are around an inch wider than those of women a generation older. Women in their 20s wear a bra at least two sizes larger than that of their mothers. Waist size, meanwhile, has gotten slightly smaller, accentuating many young women's curves. The average 20-year-old is also nearly three inches taller than she was fifty years ago, according to government statistics, and the average foot has grown by nearly a quarter of an inch.
Nutritionist point to the change in diet of women today. Before meals consisted of mostly fish and tofu but these days Japanese women are exposed to westernized foods consisting of red meat and dairy. All this extra protein and calcium has led to longer, stronger and fuller bodies. According to doctors the intake of extra fat tends to go to either breasts or hips in adolescent girls.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens