# Print your own body parts



## Vertigo (Feb 15, 2013)

Sort of topical this with Harpos SD moon base thread running 

I picked up this link from Neal Asher's blog. Fascinating article about using 3D printing techniques to create human (or otherwise I guess) body parts. Hadn't realised how far they've come with this technology!

http://singularityhub.com/2013/02/1...am-up-to-bring-printable-human-organs-closer/


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## Lenny (Feb 15, 2013)

I remember watching a TEDMED video on YouTube three or four years ago about a researcher who was printing heart valves using stem cells and a modded inkjet printer.

And found!

The researcher was Dr. Anthony Atala, and it was a TEDMED talk from 2009:






What I found wonderful about the talk, and still do, is that the footage of the heart valve being printed clearly shows that it consists of shapes drawn in a Microsoft Word document on an XP computer!

Now that 3D printers are starting to reach consumer prices (albeit prices for wealthy consumers), we should start seeing the technology improve at a remarkable speed. At the moment, for example, 3D printers cannot print with more than two materials at a single time. Just think, when it's possible to print with five materials, then ten, then twenty, the possibilities will be endless!

If we can print body parts that are accepted by the host (after all, they can be printed using new cells grown from the host's original cells), then why can't we start printing things like food?


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## Vertigo (Feb 15, 2013)

Too late to watch the video right now, Lenny, but I'll come back to it.

And, yes absolutely! I agree the possibilities do seem pretty awesome the more you look at it. I was reading about some people looking at the possibilities of printing medicines in remote locations or even at home. *images of the mood thingy in Do Androids...*


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## Huttman (Feb 15, 2013)

Ok, sorry, I am going to stay adult about this, but I had COMPLETELY the wrong idea about this thread.....yeah.


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## Vertigo (Feb 15, 2013)

Hehe, not that any innuendo was intended of course 

Watched the video now Lenny, and wow!, you really feel like we are on the brink of some major breakthroughs in this area.


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## Harpo (Apr 8, 2013)

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130404-breakthrough-3d-printer-creates-living-tissue.html

April 4, 2013 
*Oxford University* scientists have developed a custom-built programmable 3D printer that can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues. 
The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets that are encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies. 
Scientists say these printed 'droplet networks' could be the building blocks of a new kind of technology for delivering drugs to places where they are needed, or potentially one day replacing or interfacing with damaged human tissues. 
"We aren't trying to make materials that faithfully resemble tissues but rather structures that can carry out the functions of tissues," said Professor Hagan Bayley of Oxford University's Department of Chemistry, who led the research. 
"We've shown that it is possible to create networks of tens of thousands connected droplets. The droplets can be printed with protein pores to form pathways through the network that mimic nerves and are able to transmit electrical signals from one side of a network to the other."


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## Lenny (Apr 30, 2013)

Yeah, Science!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4...first-child-bioengineered-windpipe-transplant


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## Dream Walker (May 1, 2013)

But should one indulge in such a process, surely we would need to set limits. Otherwise the uncontrolled vanities of certain individuals could lead to disaster.


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## Vertigo (May 1, 2013)

To be honest DW I think this particular Pandora's box is well and truly open. If we attempt to set limits people will simply go to countries that haven't set limits to get whatever it is they want. And there will always be countries that don't set limits.

This is the kind of technology that we are going to have to live with in the future and we need to figure out a way of living with it. It will probably form a large part of future cosmetic treatments as well as more clinical ones and I just don't think it is going to be controllable. Within a decade or so I can see a new culture, similar to the the current tattoo one, adopting this sort of thing to graft all sorts of crazy 'additions' onto people.

Am I happy about that? Not really, but that doesn't change it's inevitability.

It's also significant that Lenny's post is about a Catholic mission hospital where they "prayed on the matter" and determined that it wasn't in violation of Catholic teachings. Those kind of people are going to find it very, very hard to draw a line beyond which it is in violation of those teachings.


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## Harpo (May 31, 2013)

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/05/17/human-doll-cloning-is-so-hot-right-now-in-japan/


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