3D Printing

How amazing would it be that everyone’s life could be saved, from needing a heart or needing an ear to have the ability to look and have a normal life? â€Å"Nearly 120,000 men, women and children currently need lifesaving organ transplants. †( Statistics | Donatelife) And the saddest thing is about â€Å"Every 10 minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list. †( Statistics | Donatelife) We are in need of organ donors, but not a lot of people want to donate their organs. Thanks to our new science we have new invited the 3D Printer. What is a 3D Printer? How does it work? What type of organs can it create? What is 3D printing? â€Å"3-D printing is a manufacturing process that builds layers to create a three-dimensional solid object from a digital model. †(3-D Printing) You might think this printer was something that was just now created in 2012 or 2013, but amazing the first 3D printer created was the one in 1985 and was given credit by Michael Feygen. â€Å"In the past, the cost of 3-D printing was expensive and the technology was only used by large corporations, but the development of desktop 3-D printers has made the technology more accessible to small and mid-sized businesses and home users. †(3-D Printing) What is cool about them now, is that they have been gifted with the right science to invite the 3D printer that can print out real working organs that can be transplant to people in need. How does it work, real organs for human transplants? â€Å"In two decades, 3-D printing has grown from a niche manufacturing process to a $2. 7-billion industry, responsible for the fabrication of all sorts of things: toys, wristwatches, airplane parts, food. Now scientists are working to apply similar 3-D–printing technology to the field of medicine, accelerating an equally dramatic change. But it’s much different, and much easier, to print with plastic, metal, or chocolate than to print with living cells. †(How 3-D Printing Body Parts Will Revolutionize Medicine) It might be easy creating these organs tissues for the human body, but unfortunately it is not as easy as you think it is. You cannot just randomly created a good 3D organ heart and expect for it to beat. â€Å"â€Å"For some tissues, even the simple ones, we don’t even know exactly what it takes to make the tissue behave like a real tissue,† says Lipson. â€Å"You can put the cells of a heart tissue in the right place together, but where’s the start button? †Ã¢â‚¬ (How 3-D Printing Body Parts Will Revolutionize Medicine) The way they prepare the stuff to make the tissue is can be a little confusing and time consuming. â€Å"They started by pipetting cells into petri dishes by hand. Then, led by Anthony Atala at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, researchers began to seed those cells onto artificial scaffolds. Made from biodegradable polymers or collagen, the scaffolds provide a temporary matrix for cells to cling to until they’re robust enough to stand alone. †(How 3-D Printing Body Parts Will Revolutionize Medicine) In 1999 through 2001, Atala has been successful enough to have implanted the first grown lab organs into seven patients at the Boston Children’s Hospital saving their precious lives. What types of organs can it create? â€Å"In labs around the world, bioengineers have begun to print prototype body parts: heart valves, ears, artificial bone, joints, menisci, vascular tubes, and skin grafts. †(How 3-D Printing Body Parts Will Revolutionize Medicine) They are still being made today and maybe at this minute as you read this essay. Only a few have been implanted to real humans like the bladders that Atala has been successful to implant. As our technology and science improves, someday we will be able to replicate a whole human body and make it live life like a regular human. Having this 3D Printer since 1985 and improving from only being able to replicate tools to real working organs has changed our living styles. As the printer gets more science improvements and smarter; maybe later in the years, there could probably be more people surviving and not having to wait for a person to donate their original organs for their transplant. Just imagine the price it would probably be though, just to get 3D Printer Organs for a Transplant. Sooner or later, we will have the technology to give those people that are praying for an organ a chance of survival.