From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Mon Dec 23 2002 - 14:23:16 MST
On Mon, 23 Dec 2002, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Interesting, I thought about posting this but I didn't see the discovery
> as that exciting to bother the list about. Perhaps I see Greg Fahy's work
> on vitrifying organs as solving this problem sooner and don't think of
> this as "that" significant. One still has the problem of the time it
Not really. It's more a tour de force, but not a practical solution. The
organs are not yours, and the process, even if viable, is highly damaging.
If you can grow organs from own stem cells in xenohosts you can stage the
prepping for the operation optimally (xenodonors are rarely asked for
consent). In most cases transplantations don't need to be done suddenly,
overnight. There are waiting lists going on for years (a relative of mine
is waiting for a liver; she's been slowly going up to higher and higher
priority so soon there is going to be a donor organ with her name on it).
> takes to grow adult sized organs through "natural" processes. That may
> only be solved with "whole genome engineering" to an extent that provides
> a faster cell division time (in normal eukaryotic organisms its ~24 hours
> but one "should" be able to speed that up significantly). A new kidney
> may be of no use if it takes a pig 5-10 years to grow one (unless you
> can afford to grow up a spare supply in advance).
While it's not fun, you can spend some 5-10 years on dialysis before your
transplant matures. And of course we're now within hailing distance of own
clones with higher cortex functions knocked out raised in sterile pens for
the time you might be needing a spare.
> But of course having multiple paths is probably a good thing.
Definitely.
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