Organ transplants are already on the way to becoming synthetic. 3D printing in medicine, known as bio-printing, has already successfully included a thyroid gland, a windpipe, a tibia replacement, and a patch of heart cells. Heart transplants using a human heart could be a thing of the past in less than a decade. If damaged body parts can be printed on demand, costs are lowered, shortages are eliminated, and it is less likely that the patient will reject the transplant, as the patient’s own stem cells will be included in the newly printed organ.
