Posted on 05/23/2013 2:39:40 AM PDT by Olog-hai
In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day.
It’s the latest advance from the booming field of regenerative medicine: making body parts in the lab.
In the case of Kaiba Gionfriddo, doctors didn’t have a moment to spare. Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy’s airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints, but had not implanted one in a patient yet.
In a single day, they “printed out” 100 tiny tubes, using computer-guided lasers to stack and fuse thin layers of plastic instead of paper and ink to form various shapes and sizes. The next day, with special permission from the Food and Drug Administration, they implanted one of these tubes in Kaiba, the first time this has been done. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Amazing, imagine all the ways this new technology can be used!
Ask Chuck Schumer. I’d like to see him gasping for air as somebody prints a gun.
As cold hearted as this sounds, won't the use of technology to allow folks with genetic defects to live and reproduce lead eventually to our species being unable to live and reproduce without technology?
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