3D Printing human heart

This is really amazing that they are trying to make human heart by using 3D printing.
Breakthrough: How scientists are 3D printing a human heart that will work better than yours - TechRepublic
Thanks,

Very cool.

Here we go again; another breathless puff piece written by a credulous bimbo for a self aggrandizing huckster.
Some of the statements I read in this article so grossly understate the problems that it damages the credibility of the whole thing.

A 3D printed heart "that will work better than yours"; what a crock of horseshit!
Just a "bag of muscles and an electrical system" is another real whopper that should never have made it past Stuart Williams' lips; at least not if he wants to be taken seriously, but hey; in the interests of shameless self promotion no statement too stupid to give pause before it comes rolling out.

While I'm sure his team is doing very cool things, and I like the fact that lots of smart people are exploring and pushing the boundaries all the time; this kind of crapulous nonsense isn't helpful.

Notice how they glossed over the fact that they have neither made, nor integrated any of the other bits that are just as crucial as the "bag of muscles"; the valves the SA and AV nodes, the Purkinje system, the coronary blood supply and on and on.
Each of these sub-systems alone is an incredibly complex marvel of God's engineering, all the way down to the cellular level and beyond.

So they sprayed a bunch of stem cells onto a scaffold; well WOO HOO; it's going to take a lot more than that to be impressive in 2014.
It's a bit like duct taping together a couple of cardboard boxes and saying "Look, we're almost there. It's going to be a car"

A far as making a 3D model of the presurgical condition of body parts that are going to get complex surgical intervention (the baby heart article that's linked from this one); we've been doing this for YEARS.
There's absolutely nothing there that's ground breaking; in the dental surgical field I was looking at a stereolithography system for craniofacial surgery a decade ago, and it was widely accepted, pretty mature technology back then.

So I have to confess I'm not too impressed: sorry to poop on the parade.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

implmex said:

...marvel of God's engineering...

Click to expand...

He must be a civil engineer, because as we all know, "only a civil engineer would put a waste disposal pipeline right through a recreational area."

To be honest, it's entirely possible, although I imagine initially will be very frankensteinish. My brother has keratoconus - degenerative disorder where the cornea becomes misshapen and you can loose your eye sight as a result. He had a transplant in one of the eyes in 2008, in 2010 he discovered he needed another transplant and was suggested a laser surgery referred to as cross linking, which has been proven to have greater results. To this day his laser surgery eye is the better of the two. All it took for this surgery to become a regular occurrence was 2 years.
If the situation with transplants does not change, things like this are the future unless we want to open the door to human cloning for the purpose of harvest, which to me seems immoral. I think more than pointing out the technology side of advancements, such articles better highlight the need for organ donation. I personally find it very cool, bionic hearts blow my mind.