We live in a fascinating world, and new discoveries are being made every day! In honor of this, every Sunday I will be writing a post about what’s going on in the world of science, science fiction, or some combination of the two.
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You know that scene in the The Fifth Element where they take a tiny piece of DNA and transform it into a brand new person? Well, we can’t do that yet, but we’re shockingly close.
3-D printing isn’t a new concept. We’ve actually been using this to produce 3-D models for a long time, but now is the first time we’ve been able to print real skin. Researchers as the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have successfully modified a standard computer printer to create human skin.
By cloning skin cells from burn victims, the printer is able to produce new skin directly onto the victim’s wounds, successfully speeding up the healing process. The researchers have already had great success with mice, increasing the healing time by two weeks, and are still working on adjusting the machine to work on humans. The Defense Department sees great promise in the new technology and will be investing approximately $50 million dollars into Wake Forest’s research.
Science fiction, and for some reason space rock operas, have always had a deep interest in regenerative medicine and the organ trade. Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, Blade Runner, and countless others have explored the topic. These will always be great stories, but now that this new technology is under way, I feel like a lot of the tension of these novels has been taken away. Who needs illegal organs when we can print our own? What do you think? Do dystopias now have one less plot device, or will this open up new possibilities?
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