Kidney Printer 147
smitty777 writes "Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine demonstrated his technique for printing a new kidney. The early stage technology involves scanning the patient's current organ, and actually printing the organ directly into the patient. He refutes reported claims that it's just a kidney shaped mold, as reported by some. While still in the early stages, it does hold promise that we will be able to use this technology for actual transplants in the future."
Re:Kidney shortage (Score:3, Insightful)
Your question is based on a false premise. Living bodies are not ownable.
"Your" body is the thing that does the verb that is you. Flight does not own an arrow, shining does not own the sun, a Em7 chord does not own a guitar. The action and the subject are inseparable.
Property, on the other hand, is a relationship that is separable. You do not own your body. So long as your body is being a living human being, no one does or can.
Once you are dead -- once your body is no longer being you -- by natural default the inanimate remains of your body are finders-keepers. It takes an act of the state to transform the unowned corpse that was formerly you into legally recognized property.
It's entirely appropriate for the state to say, "By default, we're going to transform part of this corpse into property in a way that helps save lives, by giving it to this doctor so that he can make those bit help do the verb that is someone else (at which point it will cease being property); and the remainder into property in a way that helps the decedent's family and friends deal with their grief by using it in some sort of funeral rites."