Posted on 03/20/2013 3:24:05 PM PDT by neverdem
Surgeons have replaced 75 percent of a man’s skull with a custom-designed polymer cranium constructed with a 3-D printer. The surgery took place on March 4 and is the first U.S. case following the FDA’s approval of the implants last month. The patient’s reason for needing such extensive replacement surgery has not been revealed.
Similar surgeries may follow in other cases where sections of the skull are removed because the brain has swollen during a surgery or after an accident, says Scott DeFelice, president of Connecticut-based Oxford Performance Materials, the company that created the prosthetic...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
plastic printer ping
...only outlaws will be able to make replacement body parts
Can he shoot from his ears?
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FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Ping
That is amazing.
Now, if only these wonderful new printers could make replacement brains for leftist extremists!
While inert like titanium, PEKK is riddled on its surface with pocks and ridges that promote bone cell growth, DeFelice says.Fascinating. I was instructed, in a college course back in 1996, that there was no perfect material for implants, but that titanium was the closest thing to it. Less than 20 years later, we have a plastic which is putatively as good in that respect as titanium, and a “printer” which can make a replacement human skull out of the stuff!
The ConstitutionArticle 1 Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . to secur[e] for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .is still “promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts.”Isn’t it nice to be a progressive liberal who is in favor of respecting the Constitution, instead of a “Progressive” or “Liberal” who is opposed to the freedom of, and to progress of, by and for, the people!
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