Story highlights
3-D printers may someday be producing complex -- and controversial -- human organs
Their precise process can reproduce vascular systems required to make organs viable
Doctor: "It has the potential for being a very important breakthrough"
Researcher: Bioprinting will spark a major ethical debate by 2016
The emerging process of 3-D printing, which uses computer-created digital models to create real-world objects, has produced everything from toys to jewelry to food.
Soon, however, 3-D printers may be spitting out something far more complex, and controversial: human organs.
For years now, medical researchers have been reproducing human cells in laboratories by hand to create blood vessels, urine tubes, skin tissue and other living body parts. But engineering full organs, with their complicated cell structures, is much more difficult.
Enter 3-D printers, which because of their precise process can reproduce the vascular systems required to make organs viable. Scientists are already using the machines to print tiny strips of organ tissue. And while printing whole human organs for surgical transplants is still years away, the technology is rapidly developing.
“The mechanical process isn’t all that complicated. The tricky part is the materials, which are biological in nature,” said Mike Titsch, editor-in-chief of 3D Printer World, which covers the industry. “It isn’t like 3-D printing plastic or metal. Plastic doesn’t die if you leave it sitting on an open-air shelf at room temperature for too long.”