I was debating this with a friend the other day;
Prosthetic parts seem to be getting better and better, but technology which allows spare parts to be grown in a lab from someone’s cells might also be perfected eventually (I can’t find a link, but I was watching a news report on cloned skin tissue potentially being used for grafts a while ago).
Which is more likely to become more dominant in medicine? Might either one be favoured for different parts?
I think it will vary based on the organ/part.
Arms and legs will probably stay as mechanical prosthetics. A limb iha multiple types of tissues (skin, bone, muscle, ligaments, tendons, cartilage, nerves, blood vessels,) it will probably be a lot harder to “grow” (other grown organs need nerves and blood vessels, too, but they aren’t typically as complicated as a whole limb.)
Even a simple organ like the heart might be mechanical (the way the heart pumps is pretty inefficient, and future prosthetic hearts will likely be like current ventral assist devices and use a continuous flow pumps.)
We can mimic some function of the kidney with a mechanical/chemical dialysis machine, but it can’t do everything a kidney does, and they’re pretty inconvenient. But it’s hard to say whether or not technology will improve enough that they can be small, implantable, and do more. By then, a “cloned” kindey might be a viable alternative.
But more complicated organs like the liver, digestive system, etc… will probably have to be cloned, IMO. There’s just so much stuff going on that it would take multiple devices to accomplish what just the liver can do. But again, who knows what the future of technology will bring, but personally I think cloning an organ from stem cells is a more likely “just around the corner” breakthrough than an artificial liver.
How far in the future?
Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not have a superior working mechanical prosthetic that looks and feels like the real thing?
I’d say artificial/mechanical prosthetics will continue to dominate in the near future, whereas in the coming centuries “grown” or cloned prosthetics will eventually come online, but some things will remain mechanical. For things like hip or other joint replacements, it’s hard to imagine growing a ball and socket joint out of living tissue that’s more durable than one made of titanium. And as the controversy over the prosthetic blade legs during the last Olympics has shown, even now there are artificial prosthetics that are in some ways superior to what they replaced.
You might also make a case for limbs being assembled from grown parts, as opposed to being grown whole.
I can imagine a variation of the inkjet skin printer creating blood vessels and fascia. Titanium end caps for the bones and some kind of acceleration of the standard fracture healing process for the middles. The long neurons are a problem, being single cells, but who knows.
Just imagine the day when there are ads directed at the affluent for mechanical organs that are better than healthy natural ones. Livers that aren’t destroyed by alcohol. Hearts that pump better for more endurance.
There’s actually quite a bit of research into using 3D printer technology to create bones & organs.
However hip replacements only last about a decade or so before they do wear out. Whereas bone is less durable, titanium doesn’t repair itself or regrow. What is also missing here is the joint lubrication and bearing system - something that is lost when a joint is replaced. Our joints are not bone on bone.
Given the number of species that can regrow entire limbs - with no medical intervention at all - we might want to imagine a future where we crack the technology for that little miracle.
What’s missing here is the “need part fast” factor.
If it’s an emergency, like a complete cardiac failure, and the doctors need to replace the patients heart immediately, they will have to use a mechanical one. A cloned one would take at least a few months (the original took 9 months, after all), and they don’t have that long to wait.
But on something like a treatment for diabetes, the patient could be maintained for months or years on insulin shots while a new pancreas is cloned for them.
So the answer to the OP is ‘it depends’ – both will be used, depending on the circumstances.
Wouldn’t it be simply up to what’s the cheapest option? I assume it’ll be mechanical replacements that’ll win the war on that part till cloning gets more advancements.
It’s entirely possible that we’ll develop technology that allows manufactured components to repair themselves. Nanotech offers some fascinating ideas in that respect - just like your bone replaces or repairs itself through the operation of millions of tiny cells, a mechanical part might do the same with millions of tiny nanobots.
But I’m with you in emphasizing species that already regenerate to amazing levels. Clearly, it is possible to regenerate whole limbs if we can just figure out how.
Returning to the OP: Ultimately, what we use in the future will first be dictated by which techniques we master sooner, and then (as we master more of them) by which techniques prove to have the best results for each application. I doubt that any one approach will completely replace the others.