Throughout the course of the semester I attempted to explore an extremely complex but also incredibly fascinating area of 3D printing – bioprinting. When choosing the theme of my blog posts I had three main criteria in mind: it had to be a subject area of 3D printing that I knew very little about, I had to be personally interested in the subject, and I had to understand why this particular area is so significant. As I mentioned in my first “blog expert” post, medicine, its past, present and future, has always been discussed when I was growing up and part of me wanted to explore the new 3D bioprinting technology and share this knowledge with my family. I was also aware of the organ donors’ shortage and felt like the emergence of bioprinting gave us a promise that one day people won’t have to wait in line for transplant organs and millions of lives will be saved around the globe.

In my blog posts I tried to answer two main questions that bioprinting provoked in me. First of all, what changes will bioprinting bring to us? Will they be positive or negative? And how close doctors and scientists are to actually performing the first 3D printed organ transplantation? In my “blog expert” post #2 I compounded a table in which I summarized pros and cons of bioprinting. After performing thorough research and analysis I came to the conclusion that opportunities that bioprinting offers outweigh the potential damage of its misuse. The ability to reproduce body organs will not only save millions of lives by providing patients with organs that are made from their own cells thus dramatically reducing the risk of their rejection, but will also eliminate the black market for transplant organs – these are just a few advantages of bioprinting. In my blog post #4 and #5 I gathered information on the most recent advances in the industry as well as researchers’ estimates on how long it will take to actually develop the first 3D printed functioning organ ready (and safe!) to be transplanted. It turns out that bioprinting is currently at its research and development stage and it will take another decade or so (researchers estimate that by 2030 bioprinting will be a multimillion dollar industry) to see the first results and hear the news about the first successful operation.

Although I tried my best to answer the initial questions I had, I concluded my research with more questions than answers. When thinking about the implications of bioprinting for the world’s population, one can’t but dwell on how differently we will perceive our own bodies when limbs and organs are available to be printed on demand. Will that make us less human? Will it contradict our religious beliefs? Will bioprinting turn doctors and scientists into creators? How much regulation will be needed and how will it be reinforced? Those and many more are the questions are still left to be answered and something tells me that we might find the answers sooner than we expect.