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3D Bioprinters Could Make Enhanced, Electricity-Generating 'Superorgans'
New submitter meghan elizabeth (3689911) writes Why stop at just mimicking biology when you can biomanufacture technologically improved humans? 3D-printed enhanced "superorgans"—or artificial ones that don't exist in nature—could be engineered to perform specific functions beyond what exists in nature, like treating disease. Already, a bioprinted artificial pancreas that can regulate glucose levels in diabetes patients is being developed. Bioprinting could also be used to create an enhanced organ that can generate electricity to power electronic implants, like pacemakers.
Internet rule 34. 'Nuff said.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I can see them having success with biological machines that replace more cumbersome mechanical machines. I can even see them producing special purpose machines, like something that processes blood alcohol and takes some of the stress from over consumption off of the liver. But replacing undamaged organs with "superorgans" will take a while as people learn what isn't now known about the complexity of the systems in which organs interact. By the time they get there they might end up with distributed organs made of groups of self replicating nano sized biomachines and we'll have to be scared of a whole new class of viruses.
I am keeping up with medical technology, and frankly the amount of academic stuff that actually reaches the man on the street is so minuscule that anyone who has reached middle age can forget about that Revolutionary New Thing Coming Soon, because it won't be. While the quantity of medical research done has never been greater, advances in the practice of medicine have not been slower at any time in the past century. It's not just that we've solved all the elementary problems, but that research is now mostly directed by the businesses which sponsor it - and, contrary to popular belief, it is big, centralised, production-directed systems which tend to be quickest at completing the waterfall from research to implementation.