Tuesday, April 04, 2006



Growing your own organs

One of the problems with organ transplants is a shortage of donors. And one of the dreams of medical technology has been to grow new organs in the lab from patient's own cells, reducing both the supply shortage and rejection worries. This dream now seems a lot closer, with the news that US scientists were able to successfully grow and implant bladders in patients uffering from bladder diseases. Sure, it's just a bladder - but the technique can conceivably be applied to other organs - such as hearts, lungs, and blood vessels. Which means that in ten or twenty years, we'll hopefully be seeing a lot fewer people dying while waiting for replacement parts.

Sadly, though, I don't think it will put the Chinese government out of business.

1 comments:

one of my mother in law's friends got a chinese organ. And is now happy and healthy (unlike the donor).

Posted by Genius : 4/04/2006 05:58:00 PM