3D Printing of Human Tissue To Spark Ethics Debate 234
Lucas123 writes "In a report released today, Gartner predicts that the time is drawing near when 3D-bioprinted human organs will be readily available, an advance almost certain to spark a complex debate involving a variety of political, moral and financial interests. For example, some researchers are using cells from human and non-human organs to create stronger tissue, said Pete Basiliere, a Gartner research director. 'In this example, there was human amniotic fluid, canine smooth muscle cells, and bovine cells all being used. Some may feel those constructs are of concern,' he said. While regulations in the U.S. and Europe will mean human trials of 3D printed organs will likely take up to a decade, nations with less stringent standards will plow ahead with the technology. For example, last August, the Hangzhou Dianzi University in China announced it had invented the biomaterial 3D printer Regenovo, which printed a small working kidney that lasted four months. Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."
IP freely (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated.
Re:IP freely (Score:5, Insightful)
But I deserve to have more wealth than any ten thousand other people on this planet combined! I mean, maybe I actually invented it and maybe I just bought it from the sucker-- er, person who did. My handful of years of work should absolutely support me and my family indefinitely. Also, I shouldn't have to pay taxes because I'm so great.
Re:IP freely (Score:5, Interesting)
But I deserve to have more wealth than any ten thousand other people on this planet combined!
10,000?
Try 3,500,000,000. [democracynow.org]
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Hey, I'm not greedy!
Re:IP freely (Score:5, Insightful)
IP lawyers just want their cut... they see a way to latch onto a copywritable item (the digital file) and say "when you print it, it's a copy". The closest corollary is finding a recipe for a cake and baking it. The baked cake is not a new copy of the recipe.
The baker followed the instructions of the recipe. The recipe is copywritable and the cake is not subject of the copyright.
If IP lawyers try to say otherwise, we have a bigger mess than the implications to 3d printing. It means that you can't follow any how-to's on the internet without paying a royalty each time you follow the steps. It means that the people who write recipe books get a cut every time you make a meal.
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Err, recipes in and of themselves are not copyrightable [copyright.gov].
Now collections of recipes are (e.g. cookbooks), but recipes themselves do not hold a copyright.
Re:IP freely (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:IP freely (Score:5, Insightful)
"No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated."
It's bullshit anyway. 3D printing doesn't "threaten" copyrights or patents. It may be true that people might be able to make patented gadgets for their own home use... but that's already legal. And has been, as far as I know, for 200+ years.
There is no reason to change the laws, because manufacturing patented products for profit without permission is already illegal anyway. I don't see how enforcement of THAT would be significantly more difficult than it is now.
As usual, it's the "I have a RIGHT to suck money out of you" people who are bitching about this. Too bad. They can't stop it, and they'd better not force changes in the laws. People are pissed off enough already.
Re:IP freely (Score:5, Interesting)
"No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated."
It's bullshit anyway. 3D printing doesn't "threaten" copyrights or patents. It may be true that people might be able to make patented gadgets for their own home use... but that's already legal. And has been, as far as I know, for 200+ years.
This.
I can hand-carve Mickey Mouse figurines out of soap all day every day, and so long as I don't try to sell them, Disney can't do shit about it.
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"(probably) true, but that's because they're trademarked and/or copyrighted, not patented."
No, it isn't. The law is the same. If you have patented a device, I can copy it for my own use and it's perfectly legal. And always has been.
A patent allows you the limited-time right to commercially manufacture and distribute your invention. There is no law (in the U.S.) against copying it for personal use.
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Actually, it isn't... but if it's really just for your private home use, it's unlikely that the person owning the patent would ever even know that you did it, let alone try to sue you for doing so. Still technically not legal, though.
Re:IP freely (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IP freely (Score:4, Informative)
"Sadly no. Making patented gadgets for your own use is an infringement (both for making and for using)."
I stand corrected. I looked it up myself and you are correct.
There are however two recognized exceptions from case law. One (I don't have the citation handy) was for "determining the veracity and preciseness of the specification", and the other, from Roche Products v. Bolar Pharmaceutical, 733 F2d 858, 221 USPQ 937 (Fed. Cir. 1984). That one says there is an exception
"for the sole purpose of gratifying a philosophical taste, or curiosity, or for mere amusement"
So yes, if it is just to gratify your philosophical taste or curiosity, or for fun, it is still legal. Otherwise no, unless you are trying to compare the spec.
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"Manufacturing for public sale to make a profit is easy to track, but tracking private use is nearly impossible."
For now. When it becomes possible to actually print a Ferrari from your desktop, the "nearly impossible" tracking of everything we do would also become possible, with literally dirt cheap sensors installed everywhere.
That's unless we pass stringent privacy laws to protect against NSA/Big Data-style surveillance of random individuals. Or maybe it'll be a losing battle, and whether you're an exhibi
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Companies who engineer fluorescent proteins, for example, have patents on them. They seem to turn a profit despite the fact that there's nothing like DRM on them (DNA rights management I guess?)
I suppose people could patent the scaffolds that will be printed, but as
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IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce
When I tried to look up "Unenforceable law", I got forwarded to "void" and "invalid" laws. I guess we know what IP law is going to turn into.
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No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated.
When your only tool is a hammer...
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And by natural ideas you mean anything that comes from a human brain right? ;)
I would be more extreme and include unnatural ideas also such as those that come from a computer program.
IOW the destruction of the patent system altogether.
Yes I am a rebel and no I don't believe that inventors should be given monopolies anymore - that boat has sailed.
For once looking forward to the future (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. While R&D certainly plays an important role, it lately churned out a clusterfuck of unnecessary IPs. The whole industry needs a good shakedown to wake to reality.
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How are IP attorneys like John Hornick supposed to earn a living when you can print anything you want in the future? This will have a devastating effect on our economy, because IP lawyers are among the most productive people in our entire society. Won't someone think of the lawyers???!!
Re:For once looking forward to the future (Score:5, Funny)
Won't someone think of the lawyers???!!
Way ahead of ya - that's why I built a ramp for the thresher.
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How are IP attorneys like John Hornick supposed to earn a living when you can print anything you want in the future?
I can hardly wait until I can print up an IP lawyer for myself!
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(sigh) we all know what's coming. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course it has already been done (maybe NSFW) [vice.com]...
But yes, the living version....
Re:(sigh) we all know what's coming. (Score:5, Funny)
ewww... just ewwwww. and ick. (Score:3)
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Why the sigh?
Genital regeneration [wikipedia.org] may lead to the restoration of parts lost via genital mutilation. And science looks a lot more appealing than this foreskin restoration method [wikipedia.org]. NSFW.
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"Admit it, the first thing we're all going to print is genitalia."
And what glorious genitalia they will be. especially if the designs are crowdsourced on 4chan.
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Admit it, the first thing we're all going to print is bacon.
Fixed that for you.
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Printing the genitalia is one thing, installing it is another. Or were you just talking about a mobile peripheral?
Not everything... (Score:5, Funny)
New IP slogan... (Score:2)
You wouldn't download a kidney, would you?
~Loyal
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well, the world of "Repo: The Genetic Opera" at least won't happen.
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Considering the amount of data required to print DNA, it would only take a few centuries' worth of bandwidth caps...
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Isn't a sequenced human genome only something like half a gig?
At last... (Score:2)
That 3rd arm I've always needed.
Might as well make it a 3rd and 4th, because with a 3rd I'd be griping about needing a 4th arm...
I've Said It Once, I'll Say It A Million Times (Score:2)
Some may feel those constructs are of concern
Sigh... idiots ruin everything...
3D Printing is too complex. There is an easier way (Score:4, Interesting)
We've "discovered" this material that is called Extra Celluar Matrix, which forms the scaffolding for organs. We can remove the organ's cells, leaving just this scaffolding. Then we can take a culture of cells from your own organ and use it to populate the scaffolding, resulting in an organ. .
3D printing an organ is a much more complicated process. The only advantage is it does not require a donor XCM. But here's the cool thing about XCM, it doesn't trip the immune system, and the organ's cells are yours, so there is no rejection.
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For got to mention the XCM is also not species dependent. So We could use pig organs to contribute the scaffolding.
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Thanks for pointing all this out. Its true, 3D printing organs is a waste of time. You'd rather just grow them in vats, shcluff off the existing cells, and populate the organ with cells from the receiver.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo... [nih.gov]
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How does that account for the microvascular system?
The beauty of 3D printing organs is the ability to include all the auxiliary support systems and complex structures. Much of the technology being developed is also using the donor's own tissues and so it too does not trip the immune system.
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I disagree with a lot of the parent's post, but this part is reasonably solved. When you decellularize an ECM, the vessel walls remain intact. Then you reseed with HUVECs (an endothelial cell line), and they tend to find their way back onto the old vessel walls to form a vasculature.
But you are absolutely right that the microarchitecture of the tissue is very, very significant to proper function.
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While the ECM molecular components are conserved as you point out in another post, their distribution (e.g., how much collagen IV, matrix-embedded glycoproteins, etc.), stiffness, and microarchitecture vary quite a bit from species to species, organ to organ, and even individual to individual. And this radically affects the phenotype of the cells that you transplant on them. Both cancer and "normal" epithelial cells are known to change their motility, proliferation, and even polarization characteristics bas
Screw the IP and the copyrights (Score:2)
Engineered humans (Score:2)
They're talking about mixing human and animal tissue to capitalize on specific traits. This is engineered biological components--engineered humans. Not genetically engineered, but physically engineered, like engineered wood.
You can have your arm replaced with a majorly upgraded arm? Legs that can run so fucking fast...
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They're talking about mixing human and animal tissue to capitalize on specific traits. This is engineered biological components--engineered humans. Not genetically engineered, but physically engineered, like engineered wood.
You can have your arm replaced with a majorly upgraded arm? Legs that can run so fucking fast...
Have they figured out the whole wiring issue?
I have the understanding that the reason we still use prosthetic limbs rather than cybernetic or organic replacements is because hooking up the nerves is a no-go.
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I think DARPA has some ideas on direct nerve-electrode connection, though I think their current work on PROTO 2 is using a technique called Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, which AFAICT, is essentially rewiring the nerves to some muscle near the amputated limb and reading impulses off that with implanted myoelectric sensors.
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Given that they're already running trials of nerve-electronics interfaces [ieee.org] I'd say your understanding is wrong.
Again.
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Furries!
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anything? (Score:2)
3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."
Until we get devices like the Star Trek replicator [wikipedia.org], and there are materials even it can not produce, we will be restricted by the materials available to 3d printing. Try 3d printing a working CPU. It will be a very long time before we "can make anything".
Re:anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be a very long time before we "can make anything".
If IP attorneys like John Hornick have it their way, that 'very long time' will equal 'forever.'
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I was using the "have the ability to" as the definition of "can" where you seem to be using "am allowed to by law" as the definition. For example, I "can" steal a car but I am "not allowed to by law".
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I was using the "have the ability to" as the definition of "can" where you seem to be using "am allowed to by law" as the definition. For example, I "can" steal a car but I am "not allowed to by law".
You could 'try' to steal a car, but with all the anti-theft systems and interlocks baked into the finished product, chances are unless you're a professional, you'd just end up breaking stuff.
Therein lies the rub - sure, a 3D printer you built yourself will only have the restrictions you put into it; but what about the mass market versions that most people (i.e., those not technically savvy enough to build or hack one) will be buying? Do you really think nobody's going to try to shoehorn some form of draconi
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Go ahead and try to think of a way to compare a person's design with all the patents out there and decide if it infringes or not. Sorry but DRM is currently used to prevent use of unlicensed software or copying of copyright content. It has nothing to do with creating new content that is a copy. For example, anyone can record a copy-written song and distribute it. There is no DRM that can prevent that. That is exactly the same as creating a new design that happens to infringe on an existing patent.
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (Score:3)
A great book [rebeccaskloot.com] that probed the lines between cells, what makes us a human, rights to your own body, and identity. I hope they all read this.
Kidneys, now bio-free! (Score:2)
So this is really more of a side-topic, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I guess I've always thought we would get closer to artificial/mechanical creatures as time and technology progressed. I'm wondering if the advent of 3D printing makes it possible for printing kidneys made of alloys that aren't rejected, and polymer membranes that filter the blood. Bio matter wears out, but functional artificial kidneys may not.
Then again, a human heart lasts an astonishingly long time (2-3 billion beats) and I don
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Good luck buying a dialysis machine with an 80+ year service interval between repairs. Biological systems are actually rather robust, thanks to an extensive infrastructure of self-repair mechanisms. Bio matter may not be as strong as engineered materials, but it gets continuously replaced instead of fatiguing and degrading over time.
Morality is for people who are not dying (Score:3)
If Its my family member and that printed organ can keep them alive long enough for a donated organ to be found...hell yes.
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If Its my family member and that printed organ can keep them alive long enough for a donated organ to be found...hell yes.
Come now. It's perfectly ethical to watch millions of people die while you argue about the ethics of using new technology to save them.
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The moral issue comes in the form of "Let's print out arms with the strength of a gorilla and attach them to babies!"
How's that a moral issue? Seems more like an engineering issue to me.
"Everything will change" (Score:2)
"Everything will change"
So let me get this straight... after the singularity, we will be living in a post-singularity world?
Wow.
It's different because it's from a computer (Score:2)
We've been dealing with artificial organs and transplanted organs for a very long time, I'm finding it difficult to figure out the real issue at hand here. It sounds to me that the 3D printing of organs would be using cells from the recipient, as in the person that needs a new liver would donate the stem cells for the new liver.
In the case of a person with "bad" DNA that might prevent using their own cells for the new organ, like type one diabetes, then cells from a suitable donor would be used. The diffe
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Paraphrasing Nietzsche (Score:2)
And when everyone is superman, no one will be.
Yeah I hear what you are saying, now shut up. (Score:2)
"IP will be ignored"? (Score:2)
IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce.
yeah, it's called China. IP/copyright means nothing to them and trying to enforce it is impossible.
Just sayin'
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To go into Tamarian and mix references:
"Mister Pink, sitting in diner, rubbing his thumb and finger together."
It will be SUCH a HORRIBLE occurrence if the IP vultures go out of business. We will all cry.
Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (Score:4, Interesting)
Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.
The same question could be asked today, not in some vague future "when it becomes cheap." Why do people by Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola cans, when the generic brand fizzy brown stuff (that performs equally well in blind tests) costs half as much? Why do people buy designer clothes labels, made in the same overseas sweatshops to the same shoddy standards as the "budget" brands? A large portion of present-day economic spending goes to wasteful expense, paying for "big names" brands whose biggest expense is paying for more ads to convince people the "big names" brands are better. If economy and quality of goods was a major concern, today's store shelves would look very different.
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Why do people...
A depressing question. Another example is: why would anyone buy a brand-name off-the-shelf drug (e.g. pain reliever) when 1 foot away there's a generic for half the price? Half the time you don't even have to do any math (re. milligrams & qty) to see that (if the shelf labels don't already give the unit price).
Here is why: (Score:2)
A couple of reasons:
1) as it turns out, not all generics are the same as the drug it's a generic of. For example the generic for Wellbutrin XL releases the drug much faster over a 24 hour period then Wellbutrin XL does(32% over the first 2 hours for the generic vs 8% for the name brand). So it's the same active ingredient but not be released at the same rate. This means over the 24 hour period you aren't getting an even dose and towards the end of the 24 hours it may have no effect.
2) When people buy a 't
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Conversely, a big brand has money to blow to trade advertising for actual product quality. An upstart product doesn't have a zillion dollar advertising campaign to subconsciously associate it with good things --- it must rely on actual reputation and word-of-mouth, against a large initial perceptual disadvantage. And, many generics do have their own reputation to uphold --- if Generic Store Brand X becomes generally reputed as shoddy, it's no less harmful than a big name brand ending up the same. But Store
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"The same question could be asked today, not in some vague future "when it becomes cheap." Why do people by Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola cans, when the generic brand fizzy brown stuff (that performs equally well in blind tests) costs half as much? "
Not quite the comparison to make. The question should rather be phrased: Which would you rather drink, Coca-Cola or a beverage you juiced yourself from the fruits in your back yard?
You'd probably pick Coca-cola or some other store-bought drink if you don't have the ti
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The big names are going to fight tooth & nail to make sure it doesn't become cheap and easy.
You make it sound like we don't do his now. (Score:2)
Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.
Why do people buy an MP3 collection when they could just hum their favorite songs all day?
For a long time, the commercial produced version will probably simply be better. And when there becomes a way of getting the same for free (i.e. piracy), then the laws will simply be cranked up to try and prevent it, just like we did in the wake of early file-sharing networks.
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When you can patent part of the GENOME you're already past that.
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Didn't that just change?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/... [cnn.com]
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startrek.com did a story yesterday that claimed that the Star Trek replicator wasn't far off because someone used a 3D printer to make a pizza.
The point is that people don't grok what a 3D printer is yet. If a 3D printer is creating a pizza it ISN'T creating the cheese biomatter, it's simply spraying cheese.
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...ok. Perhaps not the TNG replicator but the TOS food replicator for sure. A food based 3D printer is probably not far off the TOS food replicator.
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So, running a head that ejects some liquid on a surface isn't what an inkjet printer does? And running a very similar head that uses a laser to make powder adhere to a surface isn't what a laser priter does?
Anyway, now that I'm writing something, this thread is stupid. People are printing tissues in lab in machines that consist exactly of a liquid ejecting head that run over the 3 dimensions of the "printing" space. Just like a Makerbot. This tech solved some of the old problems of cells not assembling in t
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I remember reading about one DRM system where a 3D printer will not print any files it gets unless they are signed and approved by an IP consortium. I am amazed this hasn't been put out yet
Why would 3D printer manufacturers want such a thing? Their business relies on selling as many printers as possible, and this would only hurt that effort. The only way this would happen is if governments mandate it, the way they did with copiers detecting counterfeiting. However, governments are notorious for being gla
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I completely agree... But take a look at media players, and computers being sold nowadays.
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What do you mean? What's going on with media players? Or computers? I haven't heard of any of them looking for "unauthorized" files; in fact, consumer pressure forced Apple to abandon DRM in the iTunes store.
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What do you mean? What's going on with media players?
Umm, ever use a DVD player? I'd bet that it was region encoded, so it won't play DVDs from outside of your part of the world. Theoretically, this is supposed to be a piracy prevention scheme.
in fact, consumer pressure forced Apple to abandon DRM in the iTunes store.
Yes, for music. But try downloading any videos from most reputable sources without DRM. And, regardless, this discussion is about whether something will be significantly inhibited in its marketing by some sort of DRM... the iTunes store clearly became popular with DRM in place -- without competition from major non-D
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Umm, ever use a DVD player? I'd bet that it was region encoded, so it won't play DVDs from outside of your part of the world. Theoretically, this is supposed to be a piracy prevention scheme.
Ok, that's true, DVD and BD players do have some DRM measures like this. However, this is because the content is controlled by companies in an organization that devised these schemes, and required the player mfgrs to follow these DRM schemes in order to be licensed to make and sell these players.
With 3D printing, the o
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'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.'
That's the fucking point!
IP should die a quick horrible death instead of holding back inovation!
Chiba City ....
Do you all really think that much of the rest of the world cares about US / European IP? Once other countries get the base technology down (and China, in this example, certainly has already done so) the copy part comes pretty quickly.
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Even before we get there, we will need to tackle the question of whether a created machine can be granted the civil rights normally associated with an adult human, at all..
We could grant the civil rights of an adult human to a screw driver. So yes, I think we could do it for a created machine that actually would be able to exercise those rights.
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And then, what would a twice removed or twice updated human being life's be worth? Will we treat them with the same respect and rights as a First born?
Considering that this technology would most likely come first to the extremely wealthy, I expect that the answers will swiftly either become (a) "yes" or (b) "no, and it sucks to be a meatbag commoners."
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That's not to say that the ivory tower academics (read: sociologist and other useless fields masquerading as a science) won't eventually put this in the spotlight of their shitty post-modern papers and circlejerk about how it's causing divisions in society and blah blah blah, but luckily, no one ever listens to them.
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More important than idiot ethicists standing in the way is the "more than a decade" for approval in the west. As opposed to what? Hundreds of thousands dying each year for lack of organs?
Hundreds of thousands dying from poorly made organs. Possibly in very bad ways and after spending hundreds of thousands or millions for them and being given false hope.
The FDA doesn't exist just to dangle perfect cures above people's heads and cackle as they die frustrated. It exists to keep bad products that can kill people who are relying on them to save them from reaching the market. The FDA has guidelines for allowing some experimental treatments when there are no alternatives, but when there are, it
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