Growing Organs
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in ScienceIn the new procedure, doctors extract muscle and bladder cells from a small piece of the patient’s own bladder. The cells are grown in a Petri dish, then layered onto a three-dimensional mold shaped like a bladder.In a few weeks, the cells produce a new bladder, which is implanted into the patient. Within a few more weeks, the new bladder has grown to normal size and has started functioning.
Atala is working to grow 20 different tissues and organs, including blood vessels and hearts, in the laboratory, according to the university.
My question is…will this technology ever get to the point where I can just grow another organ for the hell of it? And then I can put my new heart in a mason jar on the mantle and when people ask, I’ll say, “A girl stole my heart once. I got it back.”
Okay, I’ll stop. This is serious stuff and it’s good to see the technology is advancing.
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April 4th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Yes, we’ll get to that point, if not in our lifetimes, in our children’s. Patents will be applied for, they will run out, and by then we’ll have fabbers in the garage that can take the now public-domain plans and build the machines for a reasonable cost.
Now imagine that world and how much stricter it would have to be because you can just as easily fab up WMD (bio/chem at least) the exact same way.
April 20th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
With this technology, this could be a plus for people with diabetes, heart disease, kidney failures, and other types of disease. However, I think that this technology could open the doors for a whole host of other things, including eating real meat without killing animals, or even veteranariens that could grow organs for pets as well.
How it could work, is that a patient with a diseased organ goes into the hospital. They take out the diseased organ, find and take out healthy cells, and use them to grow a whole new organ. There, a temporary organ is placed in and the patient goes home. Once the permanent organ is grown, the paitent gets called in, and gets the grown organ implanted in the body.
But does this mean that I will start eating french fries, burgers, shakes, and fraps in abundance? No. I will stick to organic fruits, vegtables, fish, and grilled or baked meats. Yes, although I love with animals, vegetarians arn’t the best of healthy diets.