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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.
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?"
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!
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 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
Why would 3D printer manufacturers want such a thing? Their business relies on selling as many printers as possible, and this would only hurt that effort. The only way this would happen is if governments mandate it, the way they did with copiers detecting counterfeiting. However, governments are notorious for being glacially slow to respond to technological change. They're even worse about working across national boundaries, as your IP consortium idea would require. I can see them trying to do such a thing in 5-10 years, but by then the cat will be out of the bag.
Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.
The same question could be asked today, not in some vague future "when it becomes cheap." Why do people by Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola cans, when the generic brand fizzy brown stuff (that performs equally well in blind tests) costs half as much? Why do people buy designer clothes labels, made in the same overseas sweatshops to the same shoddy standards as the "budget" brands? A large portion of present-day economic spending goes to wasteful expense, paying for "big names" brands whose biggest expense is paying for more ads to convince people the "big names" brands are better. If economy and quality of goods was a major concern, today's store shelves would look very different.
It will be a very long time before we "can make anything".
If IP attorneys like John Hornick have it their way, that 'very long time' will equal 'forever.'
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
If Its my family member and that printed organ can keep them alive long enough for a donated organ to be found...hell yes.
I was using the "have the ability to" as the definition of "can" where you seem to be using "am allowed to by law" as the definition. For example, I "can" steal a car but I am "not allowed to by law".
You could 'try' to steal a car, but with all the anti-theft systems and interlocks baked into the finished product, chances are unless you're a professional, you'd just end up breaking stuff.
Therein lies the rub - sure, a 3D printer you built yourself will only have the restrictions you put into it; but what about the mass market versions that most people (i.e., those not technically savvy enough to build or hack one) will be buying? Do you really think nobody's going to try to shoehorn some form of draconian DRM into the firmware?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Why do people...
A depressing question. Another example is: why would anyone buy a brand-name off-the-shelf drug (e.g. pain reliever) when 1 foot away there's a generic for half the price? Half the time you don't even have to do any math (re. milligrams & qty) to see that (if the shelf labels don't already give the unit price).
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
That depends on what them definition of "is" is. A government can grant whatever legal rights it chooses. Natural rights don't really apply in this context since by definition IP is a legal right.
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
Conversely, a big brand has money to blow to trade advertising for actual product quality. An upstart product doesn't have a zillion dollar advertising campaign to subconsciously associate it with good things --- it must rely on actual reputation and word-of-mouth, against a large initial perceptual disadvantage. And, many generics do have their own reputation to uphold --- if Generic Store Brand X becomes generally reputed as shoddy, it's no less harmful than a big name brand ending up the same. But Store Brand X has fewer celebrities and scantily clad women on the payroll to convince you to overlook its shortcomings. Brand loyalty results in market failures (one of the many reasons why market systems are prone to inefficiencies, once you step a little beyond naive ideology), creating barriers to entry for better alternatives.