| Nov. 12th, 2009 @ 04:42 pm Totally cool! |
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Current Mood:  accomplished
Okay, so I was just reading this totally awesome article that says things like "Dr. Anthony Atala has been growing human tissue and organs, in a lab, for nearly two decades. He's even printed kidneys from a cell-stuffed inkjet printer." Which reminded me of the fabricator devices in my Mindeodean stories, so I came up with this Mindeodean advertisement as a way of writing down the idea it inspired:
Mindeodean advertisement: "Don't want to wait several months for a replacement limb to grow back? Do you want to be fully able-bodied NOW? Well it's your lucky day! Introducing the MediFab 9000, voted #1 in the Empire for fabricating real live replacement body parts. For just 5 easy payments of 5,000 credits, you can have your very own MediFab 9000 and never have to wait several months for a limb to grow back EVER AGAIN! Just give the MediFab 9000 a sample of your DNA, select which organ you need to regrow, and let the MediFab 9000 scan your entire body so it can fabricate the perfect replacement for you! In just 15 to 25 minutes you can fabricate a brand-new, living replacement organ ready to attach to where your old one was. Comes complete with 100% certified reattachment station. Even if your amputation has healed over, you can still get a living replacement fabbed for you with no risk of blood loss or rejection!
Not a Mindeodean? SO WHAT!?!? All human species, from Terrans to Joquari, can get the same benefits from this machine! And if you order within the next 24 days, you'll get free intergalactic interstellar shipping! So don't delay, call today!"
Dunno if "intergalactic" was the right word or not, seeing as they haven't gone out of the Milky Way yet (except for unmanned exploratory probes), but I couldn't think of a better word.
I figure the way the MediFab would work is it first fabricates stem cells (scan a living stem cell layer by layer fast enough, and then fab it fast enough, you could end up with living cells) with modifications based on the DNA sample, then once it had enough of those it would put them into certain solutions depending on what kinds of cells they were supposed to change into (muscle cells, skin cells, liver cells, etc), then pump those cells into a second fabber, arranging the cells in the right order. And Viola! Replacement arm/leg/important organ!
I also dunno about the price, but I figure they'd be more expensive than a regular fabber, but the element canisters would be essentially the same, so I figure hospitals in this future could replace missing organs and limbs for a pretty small fee (cost of materials used to make the organ1 + a slight offset to help pay for the fabber itself + a small profit). Such a thing could revolutionize the medical industry! It could a huge step toward curing paralysis and so on. And no more waiting for years on a donor list! No more black market for organs harvested from healthy people!
1 = Analagous to the cost of ink and paper when you print at a public library. |
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