Okay this sounds exciting and quite scary at the same time. Apparently, now they have the ability to make human body parts on a freakin PRINTER! Yup! http://formlabs.com/de/stories/shirley-technique-facial-prosthesis/ In fact they've been doing this for some time now. What I don't get is how do they know what our body parts are made of (Always use to wonder that)? Heck some sites also offer 'files' that you can simply put it in your printer (I'm assuming you have to buy a special printer for this) and out comes your product in an actual physical form. Like this human ear! https://pinshape.com/items/23583-3d-printed-human-ear Has anyone heard of this? This would be pretty cool if it's not just science fiction.
I've heard of this before I remember about 2 or 3 years ago they started off printing prosthetic arms and then ears.
Afaik they seem to "only" have been printing mostly metal "bone", scaffolding for tissue to grow on and other things like that. Quite a feat if you look at necessary durability and biocompatibility. But it's not anything actually alive, so the "downlaod a bigger pen1s nao!!1!" mails and willieverse catalogue are still a long way off. Personally I (as a layman, obviously) don't see a way to print living tissue any time soon, if ever - but the scaffold approach (maybe eventually with some kind of substrate to influence what kind of cells develop where?) sounds really promising.
