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3D Printing of Human Tissue To Spark Ethics Debate
Lucas123 writes "In a report released today, Gartner predicts that the time is drawing near when 3D-bioprinted human organs will be readily available, an advance almost certain to spark a complex debate involving a variety of political, moral and financial interests. For example, some researchers are using cells from human and non-human organs to create stronger tissue, said Pete Basiliere, a Gartner research director. 'In this example, there was human amniotic fluid, canine smooth muscle cells, and bovine cells all being used. Some may feel those constructs are of concern,' he said. While regulations in the U.S. and Europe will mean human trials of 3D printed organs will likely take up to a decade, nations with less stringent standards will plow ahead with the technology. For example, last August, the Hangzhou Dianzi University in China announced it had invented the biomaterial 3D printer Regenovo, which printed a small working kidney that lasted four months. Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."
No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."
Which is why copyright and patents are BS.
Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.
Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney." I sure do hope so!
Admit it, the first thing we're all going to print is genitalia.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Gartner predicts that the time is drawing near when 3D-bioprinted human organs will be readily available,
Which means it's probably 300 years off if it ever happens because Garner is rarely right about anything. If they say the sky is blue you had better change because it probably just turned to red.
In this example, there was human amniotic fluid, canine smooth muscle cells, and bovine cells all being used.
Werebullwolf here we come!
I remember reading about one DRM system where a 3D printer will not print any files it gets unless they are signed and approved by an IP consortium. I am amazed this hasn't been put out yet, or a blacklist system similar to how copiers will shut down and phone home if they think you are copying a Euro bill.
Looks like attorneys will have the most to lose - or may the most to gain - in the arena of IP and 3D printing.
IP? Human body should be protected from patent trolls of IP.
I guess 3d printing is now a generic term that can be applied to any automated fabrication process. *sigh* Another perfectly good term made useless by the mass media.
They tried 3D printing a lawyer from a combination of cockroach, dung beetle, and rat cells. The resultant being immediately filed a cease and desist order. The researchers were unable to determine if this was a success, or whether the creature had the good of the world in mind.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Kinda of started this conceptual debate. Whether it is mechanical or biological, there is no reason to imagine we won't reach the point where a human mind could be uploaded into a synthetic brain. At which point, who shall be offered the option of skipping out on death, or extending their lives dramatically. And then, what would a twice removed or twice updated human being life's be worth? Will we treat them with the same respect and rights as a First born? Will their knowledge be viewed as a blessing or a curse, remembering things hundreds or thousands of years ago. Some say death gives meaning to life, or retirement makes way for new and fresh ideas, makes us more ready to adapt to new situations.. holding on to the past too far could spell apathy or depression.. to the point of just sitting down and dying in the face of adversity. Sparks a lot of ideas..
You wouldn't download a kidney, would you?
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
That 3rd arm I've always needed.
Might as well make it a 3rd and 4th, because with a 3rd I'd be griping about needing a 4th arm...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Some may feel those constructs are of concern
Sigh... idiots ruin everything...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.'
That's the fucking point!
IP should die a quick horrible death instead of holding back inovation!
Besides the overhyping (again) of this supposed all-powerful technology, the last time I was told that "Everything will change" was in the '70s and '80s when I was told about the leisure society. Here we are working even more than back then for less. I don't think I need a lawyer's guesses about sci-fi technology that will never happen to taint the debate even more.
We've "discovered" this material that is called Extra Celluar Matrix, which forms the scaffolding for organs. We can remove the organ's cells, leaving just this scaffolding. Then we can take a culture of cells from your own organ and use it to populate the scaffolding, resulting in an organ. .
3D printing an organ is a much more complicated process. The only advantage is it does not require a donor XCM. But here's the cool thing about XCM, it doesn't trip the immune system, and the organ's cells are yours, so there is no rejection.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I come here expecting to hear about the ethics of transhumanisim and I get empty shit from some criminal IP shark.
Ethics, schmethics. Wake me up when someone can print me an 18 inch cock. I need a second one.
I want my Klingon face now!
They're talking about mixing human and animal tissue to capitalize on specific traits. This is engineered biological components--engineered humans. Not genetically engineered, but physically engineered, like engineered wood.
You can have your arm replaced with a majorly upgraded arm? Legs that can run so fucking fast...
Support my political activism on Patreon.
For got to mention the XCM is also not species dependent. So We could use pig organs to contribute the scaffolding.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."
Until we get devices like the Star Trek replicator, and there are materials even it can not produce, we will be restricted by the materials available to 3d printing. Try 3d printing a working CPU. It will be a very long time before we "can make anything".
Research on constructing human organs from stem cells and 3D substrates has been going on for decades. It seems a little ingenuous to say that this is only now becoming an issue for bioethicists. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that people are now only paying attention to the ongoing debates.
nobody tell David Cronenberg about this!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A great book that probed the lines between cells, what makes us a human, rights to your own body, and identity. I hope they all read this.
So this is really more of a side-topic, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I guess I've always thought we would get closer to artificial/mechanical creatures as time and technology progressed. I'm wondering if the advent of 3D printing makes it possible for printing kidneys made of alloys that aren't rejected, and polymer membranes that filter the blood. Bio matter wears out, but functional artificial kidneys may not.
Then again, a human heart lasts an astonishingly long time (2-3 billion beats) and I don't know that the artificial versions we have created at this point last longer. Perhaps it will go the other way around and rather than humans becoming more mechanized, our machines will be come more bio-mechanical? Will bio-printed organs be the stepping stone to fully artificial organs, or will it be a step toward making our technology less distinguishable from biology? Can we improve upon nature in this regard, and is it hubris to try?
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
If Its my family member and that printed organ can keep them alive long enough for a donated organ to be found...hell yes.
As long as this benefits my penis, I'm all ears. Fuck you gubmint.
"Everything will change"
So let me get this straight... after the singularity, we will be living in a post-singularity world?
Wow.
Besides the overhyping (again) of this supposed all-powerful technology, the last time I was told that "Everything will change" was in the '70s and '80s when I was told about the leisure society. Here we are working even more than back then for less.
I doubt it. More likely your quality of live has improved significantly and things that were luxuries before are now considered commonplace, while thinks you didn't think would exist are now available but some of them are luxury items you can't necessarily afford.
Anyone who seriously though that technology will ever create a "classless society where everyone is rich and only has to work an hour a day" is an idiot. Your wealth relative to others will always be tied to how valuable your skills are and how much of your time you dedicate to generating wealth with them. But what technology has done and will likely continue to do is improve quality of life across the board.
More important than idiot ethicists standing in the way is the "more than a decade" for approval in the west. As opposed to what? Hundreds of thousands dying each year for lack of organs?
I can conceive of no reasonable disaster from plowing ahead that doesn't net saved lives over a cautious approach (which, by the way, was born of horror cases in front of the camera.)
We need horror cases like, "Here are 100,000 gravestones. They are the people who died this year because printed kidneys are delayed."
Treat all things, including feel-good stuff like the FDA, as potential misery and disease and death vectors.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Fuck your ethics, if a 3D printing organ can help me live just a little longer when waiting on you cheap bastards refuse to donate your organs at death, none of your idiotic laws will change my mind about getting one.
This is yet again politic trying to get in our private lives, GET OUT.
Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce.
And that is exactly as it should be.
In the end, I believe that mankind's desire to innovate is greater than his greed; and that this is the one and only
thing that will save humanity in the long run.
Breaking ourselves free of the of the shackles of the IP scourge is not only a moral imperative, it's a matter of long-term survival. Greed will prevent this from happening in my lifetime, but eventually our ideas and our expressions will be freed.
What are the possibilities for 3D printing something like a microprocessor or memory module? Could anything be that precise? If we ever get something like a $500 printer that can emulate a $1B 300mm fab, someone is NOT gonna be happy.
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The liver (not even mentioning the human brain) is an incredibly complex biomachine with a vast range of functions. Even human skin is far more than just a protective coat and has many metabolic functions. It would be far simpler to leverage that existing self-replicating data-algorithm called human cells. We will learn how to clone and vat-grow human organs as replacements long before we engineer copies of organs by printing.
ManBearPig.
Dear IP attorney John Hornick,
Fuck you!
Thanks for pointing all this out. Its true, 3D printing organs is a waste of time. You'd rather just grow them in vats, shcluff off the existing cells, and populate the organ with cells from the receiver.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo...
We've been dealing with artificial organs and transplanted organs for a very long time, I'm finding it difficult to figure out the real issue at hand here. It sounds to me that the 3D printing of organs would be using cells from the recipient, as in the person that needs a new liver would donate the stem cells for the new liver.
In the case of a person with "bad" DNA that might prevent using their own cells for the new organ, like type one diabetes, then cells from a suitable donor would be used. The difference in using donor cells in this case is that just a sample of the cells would be used, not the entire organ. We've gone through the legal and ethical issues of such donation already. It's gone to the point that blood donation is routine.
What makes this different somehow is that a 3D printer is involved. Reminds me of the big deal people make about 3D printed firearms. People have been making guns in their basements and garages for a very long time already. I guess that 3D printing makes it easier and cheaper is an issue but I see that as a good thing. Anything that makes commodities cheaper is a good thing to me.
If we are going to get upset about 3D printed anything then I'd like to see the discussion about 3D printed ladders, houses, automobiles, airplanes, or something else where structural integrity puts not just the user at risk but others that may be in the area. I suppose firearms fall in this category but that is not what people seem to be concerned about. They are more concerned about the danger 3D printing poses to "common sense firearm regulation", which means the ability to register and eventually confiscate them.
I see no issues here that have not already been discussed when it comes to organ transplantation. What I'd like to see is someone try to figure out the liability issue of some person losing their house because someone else flew a 3D printed helicopter into it. Is the pilot solely at fault? Does the designer of the helicopter share in the blame? What part does the manufacturer of the 3D printer play?
After that we'll talk about 3D printed nuclear reactors.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
There is only intellectual property law... which deserves no respect...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.
Why do people buy an MP3 collection when they could just hum their favorite songs all day?
For a long time, the commercial produced version will probably simply be better. And when there becomes a way of getting the same for free (i.e. piracy), then the laws will simply be cranked up to try and prevent it, just like we did in the wake of early file-sharing networks.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A couple of reasons:
1) as it turns out, not all generics are the same as the drug it's a generic of. For example the generic for Wellbutrin XL releases the drug much faster over a 24 hour period then Wellbutrin XL does(32% over the first 2 hours for the generic vs 8% for the name brand). So it's the same active ingredient but not be released at the same rate. This means over the 24 hour period you aren't getting an even dose and towards the end of the 24 hours it may have no effect.
2) When people buy a 'trusted brand' the placebo effect is sharper. IN that it will last longer. This is irrelevant to actually healing, but an important effect that should not be overlooked. And yes, people well aware of the placebo effect can be impacted by the placebo effect.
Hell, I know a lot about the placebo effect, yet when I tell the DR of an issue I am having, I feel better.
Does this mean don't use generic? well, that's for you to decide. I would recommend researching it and if you can''t find a comparative study then use the name brand becasue it had most of the studies don'e against it, where as the generic did not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless the ECM (Extra Cellular Matrix) comes in convenient scaffold form, you would still need to build the scaffold from the pig cells first. The 3D printer doesn't need the pre-built scaffold, so it's still easier than current ECM methods.
And when everyone is superman, no one will be.
Just hurry up and get those replacement livers lined up. I don't care what they are made of as long as they work.
How does that account for the microvascular system?
The beauty of 3D printing organs is the ability to include all the auxiliary support systems and complex structures. Much of the technology being developed is also using the donor's own tissues and so it too does not trip the immune system.
My
The 2009 Senate Bill that banned human-animal hybrids saw this coming.
Good job Congress.
Bill text.
IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce.
yeah, it's called China. IP/copyright means nothing to them and trying to enforce it is impossible.
Just sayin'
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
While the ECM molecular components are conserved as you point out in another post, their distribution (e.g., how much collagen IV, matrix-embedded glycoproteins, etc.), stiffness, and microarchitecture vary quite a bit from species to species, organ to organ, and even individual to individual. And this radically affects the phenotype of the cells that you transplant on them. Both cancer and "normal" epithelial cells are known to change their motility, proliferation, and even polarization characteristics based upon the stiffness of the tissue, for example.
And take a look at livers: pig livers have a very thick membrane between hepatic lobules, making them great for textbooks, as you can very clearly see portal triads and central veins and the overall lobular outlines. Human tissue, by contrast, has very thin membranes between lobules that can scarcely be seen in H&E pathology. This makes pig liver ECM a very poor starting point for growing a human organ replacement. When our collaborators build bioengineered liver tissue, they actually start with decellularized ferret livers because their structures are closer to humans than pigs.
This is why a mix of 3-D printing and seeding progenitor cells could be promising in the future. If you could 3-D print the ECM to have the correct spatial distribution and mechanical properties, you'd have a much better starting point when you seed them with progenitor cells to grow the epithelium / parenchyme, HUVECs to grow the vessels, etc.
Aside: I have yet to see XCM in 10+ years of cancer research and tissue biomechanics work. It's ECM.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
I disagree with a lot of the parent's post, but this part is reasonably solved. When you decellularize an ECM, the vessel walls remain intact. Then you reseed with HUVECs (an endothelial cell line), and they tend to find their way back onto the old vessel walls to form a vasculature.
But you are absolutely right that the microarchitecture of the tissue is very, very significant to proper function.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
What if someone manages to advance this technology far enough to print a human brain?
How about 3D printing the matrix and then using that as a growth medium? The future of elective surgery might be glorious.
Yup. I fracked up the abbreviation. ECM is correct. My mind probably went the phonetic route and EXtra to X. It happens more often as I get older. Hrumph.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
And restricted mode only allows you to process O'Doul's. Hope you haven't been shopping at Target.
!!!DO NOT!!!! apologize to that asshole. Contradict him all day and every day. He is CONSTANTLY in every thread running his cocksucker as if he knows every bit of information man has ever known. I'm tired of hearing his shit personally.
DICK Cheney is going to live forever.
What always makes me so depressed about these great, scientific inventions is the fact that in spite of all the beneficial uses they could be put to, we somehow always manage to turn them to evil, or if not that, then something totally idiotic:
- Nuclear energy: Bombs, bombs, bombs ...
- Television: 'Reality' shows, house makeovers,
- Computers: Facebook, Twitter - need I say more?
I mean - considering the incredible benefits to millions of people suffering from chronic illness, who could benefit from easy access to new, healthy organs, what is the most likely use for this technology in, say, 10 years? Large breasts? Huge penises?
Now there will be junk emails offering to print, and surgically attach mammoth sized "natural" schlongs, and breasts.
Didn't mean to harp on it, BTW. Happens to me more than I'd like, too! Best -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
There are a lot of human cadavers in the world.