3D printers have potential to improve medical therapeutical enhancements and change the medicine-making industry to become more productive and change some approaches of medical treatments, all for the better. Some recent breakthroughs of the 3D printer include a creation of titanium skull inserts, which are created perfectly to size of the scanned patient. A main goal in the biomedical field is to, in the near future, implement 3D printing with stem-cell research in order to print living cells to implant into patients.
There are multiple ethical concerns that arise from the use of 3D printers. The accessibility of 3D printers, when considering only the medical implications is diverse within itself. The simple answer would be for all to be able to access the use of 3D printing for medical purposes, because
3D printers have potential to improve medical therapeutical enhancements and change the medicine-making industry to become more productive and change some approaches of medical treatments, all for the better. Some recent breakthroughs of the 3D printer include a creation of titanium skull inserts, which are created perfectly to size of the scanned patient. A main goal in the biomedical field is to, in the near future, implement 3D printing with stem-cell research in order to print living cells to implant into patients.
There are multiple ethical concerns that arise from the use of 3D printers. The accessibility of 3D printers, when considering only the medical implications is diverse within itself. Currently, treatments for diseases such as those which result in abnormal bone structures in children are treated with imperfect replacements to bones. 3D printing would create a perfectly shaped bone for each stage of the child’s treatment. However, the accessibility to 3D printing would be a factor to consider in the ethical treatment of ‘poor’ people. If available to everyone for purposes of replicating an already-made items that one would need regularly, it would be easier for uneducated people posing as doctors to create underground businesses for 3D printing. Besides that, there is concern for the use of 3D printing for things that are not morally supported. What if someone just printed a gun?
Another ethical concern of the technology is the use of it to create abilities that are not accessible for the regular human body. The use of this technology for military operations would be beneficial at first, because, for example, it would be possible to replace human’s easily broken bones for more malleable ones. However, this would only lead to the creation of more destructive weapons, which would impose more harm to citizens without enhanced physical features.