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Growing Organs
In 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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One Response to “Growing Organs”
Good? It’s freaking fantastic! This is exactly the kind of cloning I’ve wanted to see happen! The potential applications are endless – think new spinal cords, grown right in situ, bridging the damaged parts – and there’s no stem cell controversy to get around.
And, hell yes, if I could afford it, I’d start banking spare parts immediately. Maybe by the time the technology’s tested and approved, I will be able to afford it.
Frankly, though, this could be a no-brainer for insurance companies to support and fund. A cloned, rejection-proof organ is less expensive, over the long term, than continued treatment of the diseased/damaged organ and certainly less expensive than transplanting someone else’s organ, with the life-long anti-rejection therapy that comes with it.
This is GREAT!