Ethical Bio Printing

While 3D printing brings the promise of innovation and creativity to many, it brings fear to others; fear of 3-D printed weapons, intellectual property infringement, and safety issues with CAD designs. As such, 3D printing raises both ethical and regulatory issues for the society.

Since the 1980's people have been improving the 3D printer. Now body parts are starting to be created, but could 3D printing organs and limbs go too far? As said by Bernard in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, "We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium” (pg 111). The world state consists of beauty and immortality. Not a single being is to have a disease or physical ailment. In modern times, humans are nothing compared to the people of the World State. People are missing body parts and are exposed to disease. Therefore, many civilians have turned to medical facility clinics to provide the necessary organs in order to survive. 3-D printing is greatly important for civilization because

Unfortunately, this is the sad reality. Having the technology to utilize a 3-D printer to reconstruct a patient’s organ would prevent patients from having to wait for a donor organ. Being able to use the patient’s own cells to build his or her new organ would decrease the chances that the patient’s body will reject it. According to Thilmany (2012) indicated “the end goal here is the growing of a biocompatible piece of tissue to repair or replace a patient's own damaged body part, such as bone, cartilage, blood vessels, or skin” (p.

Imagine having a prosthetic limb printed from a 3D printer made of the same material as Legos. Doctors and engineers have begun to 3D print and bioprint prosthetic limbs and organs. Most people do not have patents on their creations, such as prosthetic limbs and toys, meaning that other people are allowed to use the coding and create their own. Since people have access to the coding it means that people can print their own prosthetic limbs without knowing what they are doing and could end up severely injuring someone if they do it wrong. If restrictions are not put on bioprinting, then people could get severely injured; therefore bioprinting should require a license, should require a certain degree, and only certain places should be allowed

Bioengineering has been a growing field over the past few years. The new advances and research that result from bioengineer can solve problems deemed impossible before. Engineers have been working on new technology that utilizes stem cells to treat disease and save lives. The stem cells used in treatment are called embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are formed from five-day old human embryos. The usage of embryonic stem cells has caused controversy from pro-life advocates who believe embryos to be a human life; and the use of embryonic stem cells immoral. Despite the beliefs of pro-life advocates who consider the use of stem cells murder, the usage of stem cells for medical and scientific research and advancements is absolutely ethical.

Anthony Atla, a researcher at Wake Forest University, caused a sensation when he appeared in a TED talk in 2011 and gave what many people mistook for a demonstration of how to print a living human kidney. Naturally, since almost 90 percent of the patients on the organ donation list are waiting for replacement kidneys, people got very excited. After the ensuing confusion was sorted out, it turned out that 3D printing live kidneys was still in the early stages of research. The kidney printing was actually a lab experiment involving the 3D printing of kidney-like tissue that was capable of filtering blood and diluting tissue.

Printing organs has been talked about and attempted to be used for close to 40 years. Printing organs can help with advancements in many ways because it could help many of the people that are on the Organ Transplanting List, not to mention it could save countless lives as well. If organs are able to be printed and executed for procedures and transplants, then we could reduce hospital bills that increase during the time that you are waiting for an organ. Therefore, making a large advancement in the healthcare field. Organ printing can be very difficult and must be executed very carefully considering that the body may reject the new organ. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a manufacturing method in which objects are made by fusing or depositing materials—such as plastic, metal, ceramics, powders, liquids, or even living cells—in layers to produce a 3D object (Ventola, October 2014). It is incredible to see how such materials can be used to be put together to make a living organism that can be used in a human’s body. As a person ages this could be very useful because organs tend to fail and become weak when a person gets older they could potentially be used to replace the failing organs.

The idea of eliminating that and giving people the ability to create their device with the 3D printing bridges the gap and gives them direct access to the device as needed. Although, we cannot neglect the role and the impact that medical experts have played over the years from working with different amputees and creating prosthetics that not only best fit, but also strives to remove the stigma that comes with being an amputee. Medical experts play an important role in the fitting of prosthetic because they are trained and experienced. This isn’t a one fit all situation, a certain technique is required by experts to ensure patients get the best fit that suits them. Nevertheless, the shift from the medical experts to empowering patient to print their own 3D body part isn’t a loose situation since medical experts have been unable to effectively meet the demand of everyone’s need, but they still need to work together. Moreover, who is the best judge as to what a good fit is other than the

Recently there have been various articles on interesting things that have been made through printing. And in particular, objects created through the use of 3D printing have come into the world of technology. The reason I believe that this technological trend is interesting because the objects that are being printed here are microscopic.When created, these materials would be used to make essential things like biological tissue. With all the medical issues that impact our world today, any new innovation that seem to create another medical alternative seems like a great idea. This is an example of technology that affects others because later on it can provide those without medical options another alternative.This could do so much for the

• Breast implants. Most people are aware of the breast implant fiasco in which hundreds of thousands of women received silicone breast implants for cosmetic reasons. Many came to believe that the implants were making them ill with diseases of their immune systems. With human cloning and its technology, breast augmentation and other forms of cosmetic surgery could be done with implants that would not be any different from the person’s normal tissue.

Although the use of 3D printing is very useful advancing technology in medicine, and providing a glimpse into a future where medical treatment can become more of a convenience than a hassle, there are certainly a number of ethical questions that will need to be considered as these technologies develop. Susan

There are a wide range of settings in which 3D printing technology can be implemented in. In this paper, the potential use of bio-printers as a replacement for current organ donation treatments was investigated. The current organ situation in Australia was explored to assess whether the implementation of bio-printing was suitable. It was discovered that more than 1,500 people are on the Australian organ transplant waiting list, and was thus concluded that bio-printing technology could assist in reducing stress on the waiting lists. Further, this investigation involved researching various bio-printing methods used by renowned scientists in the field, such as one developed by Professor Jonathan Butcher. Current implications and future applications of the technology were also researched and has shown that there is much potential for bio-printing to develop into a major medical resources. In addition, in-depth understanding regarding the various social, ethical and environmental implications of this technology on society was developed. It was shown that from research that bio-printing technology has the ability to drastically change society’s current dependence on donors for organs and tissues. Nevertheless, there were a series of technological and moral obstacles that have to be addressed before full implementation of this technology can occur.

As the topic of 3D-Printing organs are rising with its high potential the media are for the project but they are overhyping the situation and claiming that it can print complex organs: “This promotes unrealistic projections, especially regarding how soon some of the more exciting possibilities - such as organ printing - will become a reality” (Ventola) while in reality, it can only print relatively simple organs such as muscles, valves, cartilage, and bones. It will become a reality but the research process will need to take it’s time so the idea can be successful. In more legal terms 3D-Printing has been related to crimes which resulted in areas to present bills to ban 3D-Printing out of fear, however, the research for 3D-Printing is still legal but activities for printing are done underground in secrecy. Items created from 3D-printing may be copyrighted or patented but realistically no one would copyright organs because every organ is different in their own way from size, DNA, organs being specially designed for the patient. For 3D-Printing organs to become widely used researchers will need to obtain approval for public uses; the FDA is in charge of determining if 3D-Printing organs will be used publicly. Even though the idea of 3D-Printing organs is one of the most anticipated fields of science being looks upon by many people researchers will need to overcome the current issues if they want to advance with the project in order to achieve their end

In the face of this, scientists and medical specialists alike have begun to develop methods to alleviate the consequences of organ failure. Some of these methods result from medicine, geneticists, and mechanics, but truly, the most prospective of all the methods is via biomedical engineering. Within biomedical engineering, through a method called Bioprinting, scientists can now create new organs out of the patient’s own cells, and have been doing so since 1999 (11). It works like this.

This is why a biological printer would be such an amazing tool in the medical field, the ethics have been highly questioned, however, the benefits of having such a machine and the efficiency of this new technology would completely outweigh any of the doubts one might have on their mind.