Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And Julie,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to kick off today's podcast with
Speaker 1: a quote from the Tina Day. Yes, yeah, from her
Speaker 1: book Bossy Pants. No, not at all. I would love
Speaker 1: to here it is okay. Yes, this is a wonderful quote.
Speaker 1: She says, at a certain point, your body wants to
Speaker 1: be disgusting. While your teens and twenties were about identifying
Speaker 1: and emphasizing your best features, your late thirties and forties
Speaker 1: are about fighting back decay. We all mentally prepare ourselves
Speaker 1: for wrinkles, but wrinkles are not the problem. It's the
Speaker 1: unexpected groceries. For example, your mouth, Dear God, your mouth,
Speaker 1: no matter how diligent you are about brushing and flossing,
Speaker 1: which is never diligent enough for that show off, dental
Speaker 1: hygenis of yours. At some point, you start waking up
Speaker 1: every day with a mouth that smells like a snail
Speaker 1: left in the sun. You can fix it as soon
Speaker 1: as you get up. You brush and use mouth wash.
Speaker 1: But there's something about knowing you woke up with hot
Speaker 1: mothball mouth that makes you feel old. I think God
Speaker 1: designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly
Speaker 1: transition to the grave. But I'm a big believer in
Speaker 1: intelligent design, and by that I mean I love Akida.
Speaker 1: It's a great quote because she really gets to the
Speaker 1: heart of the matter, right, Yeah. Yeah, because especially as
Speaker 1: we're living longer, our our mouths are kind of dying first,
Speaker 1: and then after our mouth dies, other things start to
Speaker 1: die as well, all these various components that give out,
Speaker 1: like like the brake pads in a in a car
Speaker 1: after you know, however, many thousands of miles. And this
Speaker 1: has been weighing heavy in our mind because of course
Speaker 1: we've been doing research into longevity. Yeah, and we just
Speaker 1: did a podcast on the whole birthday candles thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is it is like a car that the
Speaker 1: longer it goes, the more you're gonna have to replace
Speaker 1: this bit and this bit and and how do we
Speaker 1: do it? Right? Well, it turns out that you can
Speaker 1: probably grow your own organs at some point and just
Speaker 1: pop them into the microwave exactly. And that's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about. In this podcast, and it gets
Speaker 1: really crazy. I mean it's just really mind blowing stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but let's let's start with the mouth that Dies first.
Speaker 1: To quote that. Yeah, and that's a by the way,
Speaker 1: that's an awesome book, Bossy Pants for anybody who's a
Speaker 1: Tina fe fan. Like, we are so growing teeth, growing
Speaker 1: new teeth. Now, obviously we go through the we have
Speaker 1: the baby teeth that come out, we lose those. Most
Speaker 1: of us. I think we have one of our coworker
Speaker 1: still has all of their baby teeth. Really yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I have one, but it really all yeah really yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hanging on because I just made that up about
Speaker 1: the person with all their baby teeth. Oh, I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe that's just like it was a rumor that just
Speaker 1: got really you know, circulated and out of hand. There. Wait,
Speaker 1: so I don't know much about baby pee teeth. Apparently
Speaker 1: you can you can keep one of them. You're allowed
Speaker 1: as long as it's hanging out there, and it's fine.
Speaker 1: I don't have an adult tooth under it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there you go. Well, hang in there, baby tooth. But anyway,
Speaker 1: most of us lose all these. Then we grow these
Speaker 1: adult teeth. But then that's it. These teeth have to
Speaker 1: last you your entire life, and if they fall out,
Speaker 1: then you just you have to replace them with like
Speaker 1: denters and various it's a ridge work, or you can
Speaker 1: go old school with the wooden. As I say, you
Speaker 1: could carve your own yeah, you know, if you're a woodworker.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that that this piece of vital
Speaker 1: bone that we need right could possibly be replicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the the age is coming, and in some respect
Speaker 1: it's already here. When you could when we can grow
Speaker 1: new teeth. Don't ask your dinners about it yet. We're
Speaker 1: not we're not. We're not there yet. But but just
Speaker 1: like a little background in some of the crazy and
Speaker 1: bizarre stuff that we've done. Um, alright, so grow when
Speaker 1: you grow teeth naturally in your head, you have toothbuds
Speaker 1: or primordia. Okay, And these consist of two types of cells,
Speaker 1: um um epithelial and mezzan Schimmel cells. All right. So
Speaker 1: back in two thousand four, a team at King's College,
Speaker 1: London took epitherial cells from six weeks old mice, and
Speaker 1: they also took some of their bone marrow stem cells
Speaker 1: to replicate the other toothbud cell they were able to
Speaker 1: create like an artificial toothbud, all right. And then after
Speaker 1: three days they transferred this material to the kidneys of
Speaker 1: other mice where they grew into intact teeth, to the
Speaker 1: kidneys in the inside the kidney, so they had like
Speaker 1: a mouse kidney growing teeth. And then the real kicker
Speaker 1: was they were able to take that material then and
Speaker 1: actually put it into the jaw of an adult mouse.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm just still thinking about like the hag
Speaker 1: is tooth you know, Yeah, Like, isn't haggas is you know,
Speaker 1: prepared with all the different like the kidney and the
Speaker 1: liver and the traditional Scottish delicacy. Yes, yes, And so
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking, like this hag is two things stuffed
Speaker 1: in in the body cavity. Well and luckily this is
Speaker 1: of very This was this was early you know, this
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand four and two thousand nine, um.
Speaker 1: And actually there's a blog about this speck. When this happened.
Speaker 1: Us team from Oregon they published a paper on the
Speaker 1: possible of growing teeth in a lab, So, you know,
Speaker 1: getting kind of like vat grown teeth are like, all right,
Speaker 1: I kind of pictured it as a garden of teeth
Speaker 1: popping up. And then you know, and then in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, Columbia University Medical Center team unveiled a this
Speaker 1: this really off awesome growth factor and fuse three dimensional
Speaker 1: scaffold and this is Yeah, we're gonna be talking a
Speaker 1: lot about this, but this, if you look at it,
Speaker 1: basically looks like somebody knitted a little tooth. Like it
Speaker 1: looks like it's made out of some sort of fiber
Speaker 1: or something. And we use this to regenerate tissue like
Speaker 1: an action to to regenerate an actual tooth, and just
Speaker 1: around nine weeks so they direct the body's own stem
Speaker 1: cells onto the scaffolding and once the stem cells have
Speaker 1: colonized the scaffold, the tooth can grow into the socket
Speaker 1: and merge with the with the surrounding tissue in your mouth.
Speaker 1: Off see that. I think it is amazing. And that's
Speaker 1: just sort of the tip of the iceberg, right because
Speaker 1: the same process is being used for organs. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I should point out though, talking about all this work
Speaker 1: it takes to potentially grow another tit is this really
Speaker 1: drives home and this has come from the sun of
Speaker 1: a dentist. But take care of those teeth because even
Speaker 1: if they are, if technology is getting to the point
Speaker 1: where you're these are not the teeth you have for
Speaker 1: life that you could potentially grow another one. Look at
Speaker 1: all that work you're gonna have to go to to
Speaker 1: do it, when maybe you should maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: just not eat as much candy. Yeah, true, when when
Speaker 1: it eventually hits the market is not going to be inexpensive, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: initially I can't imagine. So I would hate to see
Speaker 1: people be like, grow new teeth all right past the skittles,
Speaker 1: because yeah, that's right. That really sets up a good
Speaker 1: I think basis for what we're talking about, which is
Speaker 1: again creating your own organs. And there's a guy named
Speaker 1: Anthony Atala. He is the director of the Wake Forest
Speaker 1: Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which is a huge field right.
Speaker 1: His work focuses on growing and regenerating tissues and organs,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and seven, Italian in a team
Speaker 1: of Harvard University researchers showed that stem cells can be
Speaker 1: harvested from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women and also
Speaker 1: from the pant as well. This is important because those
Speaker 1: stem cells are not rejected by the body, and they
Speaker 1: tend not to develop into tumors. So those are two
Speaker 1: important factors when you're going to introduce it seforign into
Speaker 1: your body. Now, it's important to stress here that when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the human body regenerating, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about magic here. I mean, there are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of regeneration in other creatures sanders salamander. Of course, our
Speaker 1: bones regenerate every ten weeks, our skin every two weeks.
Speaker 1: And there's a great, great line from the author Horoki
Speaker 1: Horki Mirakami, who you know, author of the wind Up
Speaker 1: Bird Chronicle. He's a big, big Japanese author. But he
Speaker 1: he says, the body cells replace themselves every month. Even
Speaker 1: at this very moment, most everything you think you know
Speaker 1: about me is nothing more than race. H nice, but
Speaker 1: there are limits, right, right, like even using um But
Speaker 1: I believe Anthony points out that you can use a
Speaker 1: smart biomaterials to bridge one centimeter gaps, right, And when
Speaker 1: he talks about biomaterial he's talking about something that that
Speaker 1: looks to the naked eye, like maybe material from a blouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, tiny little postage stamp. Yeah, I mean exactly,
Speaker 1: And so that's helping to bridge the tissue and to
Speaker 1: try to get the cells in the blood supply to
Speaker 1: reach each other in order to regenerate, right, something that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't normally be able to do yourself. Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of like a tiny splint or something. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that was That's such a tiny bit though, of what
Speaker 1: he's actually doing, right. He actually prefers to use organ
Speaker 1: specific cells from the person receiving a transplant or repairing
Speaker 1: an injury when he's trying to do larger projects. Again,
Speaker 1: the stem cells from placenta and amnionic food, they contain
Speaker 1: those those optimal stem cells. And if you're a woman
Speaker 1: who has ever been pregnant, then you probably have even
Speaker 1: seen literature about whether or not you want to bank
Speaker 1: your blood cord because actually you could use your own
Speaker 1: stem cells if you wanted to later on down the road. Again,
Speaker 1: that's not going to be any new news for for
Speaker 1: women who have undergone pregnancy. My most clinical way of
Speaker 1: saying that gotten prayers getting locked up. Yeah. But what
Speaker 1: the really cool thing is is that he has something
Speaker 1: called a bioreactor, And I'll get to that in a moment.
Speaker 1: This is something that basically is a box that you
Speaker 1: throw all of this material in and you can create
Speaker 1: an actual organ down the road. This is the the oven, right,
Speaker 1: this is the oven organ oven, which when we do
Speaker 1: when we release this podcast, will make sure that on
Speaker 1: the House to Works blogs we have some embedded video
Speaker 1: in the blog post because there's some awesome footage of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're about to talk about. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's basically like your easy bake oven for for self. Um,
Speaker 1: but what are the settings on that easy bake oven? Um? Toasty, um,
Speaker 1: soft in the metal. Yeah, well, I think more advanced.
Speaker 1: But you know, by the time this comes out, maybe
Speaker 1: the organs will be more I mean, the ovens will
Speaker 1: be more advanced and you'll have specific buttons for heart kidney. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll actually there there's something we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it a little bit that that um is very similar
Speaker 1: to that. But he's taking the tissue samples and then
Speaker 1: he incubates cells on a scaffold which we talked about before,
Speaker 1: and then he's putting it in this machine and then
Speaker 1: the machine stretches the cell so that they begin to
Speaker 1: get a muscle memory of expanding and contracting, so that
Speaker 1: once you put this into the human body that knows
Speaker 1: what to do. Um. And then the scaffolding is placed
Speaker 1: into the patient and disintegrate. Let me touch face on
Speaker 1: the scaffolding again. Um. Like I said, it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like something that's knitted. If you get down close,
Speaker 1: it looks like some sort of a nano structure, and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent it is. But it's made generally
Speaker 1: made of something like collagen or some polyesters that when
Speaker 1: it's composed of something more natural, and then there's some
Speaker 1: less natural materials. But the idea is that it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you had stitches that were absorbed
Speaker 1: back into your skin. You know, it just it disappears.
Speaker 1: It they it it melts away into into the body
Speaker 1: once its purpose is gone. Yeah, scaffold thing, you know.
Speaker 1: I initially you think of like a man painting, you know,
Speaker 1: a while high up. But this is just a it's
Speaker 1: a structure, right allows it to have this three D formation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you basically the idea is it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like paper mache where you have like a scaffold
Speaker 1: and then you put the paper mache over it and
Speaker 1: you have this and then you have the form except
Speaker 1: instead of bits of newspaper that have been dipped in
Speaker 1: what glue, it's the cells. Yeah, absolutely. And then to
Speaker 1: get back to the bioreactor. Two, this is this box
Speaker 1: that they're they're placing it in the little oven, the
Speaker 1: easy bake oven. It has the same conditions as a
Speaker 1: human body. It's eight nine point six degrees fahrenheit with
Speaker 1: oxygen and yeah, yeah, and actually the ted dot com
Speaker 1: talk featuring Anthony I tell it shows them taking trying
Speaker 1: to create digits. Actually, and they show them taking it
Speaker 1: out of the bioreactor and then basting it with more cells.
Speaker 1: And at this point I believe that what you're seeing
Speaker 1: is the bones of the fingers and and that the
Speaker 1: soft tissue on top of it. And it is amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1: In fact, you see them working with with muscles, like exercising,
Speaker 1: stretching them. You see them working on blood vessels with
Speaker 1: this kind of tubular scaffolding looks kind of like the
Speaker 1: Chinese finger thing, except you're you know, much smaller and
Speaker 1: like even like an ear if they're working with just
Speaker 1: like growing an ear. Yeah. Stuff. Again, it's just so
Speaker 1: surreal to see these things coming out of the oven.
Speaker 1: There's the ear um. And one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: that they engineered a kidney um and by the way
Speaker 1: of transplant, patients are waiting for kidney so this is
Speaker 1: pretty important. Oh wait, wait, we should do the bladder first.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, bladder was was pretty crazy because it's the
Speaker 1: first thing you touched on. It was like whoa because
Speaker 1: because blood vessels, all right, but but an actual bladder um.
Speaker 1: And it was interesting because you have like the scaffolding, right,
Speaker 1: and there are two cell components. There's the the the
Speaker 1: inside lining cells and then the outside muscular cells. So
Speaker 1: you have to basically paint the inside of the scaffolding
Speaker 1: with the finding cells and sculpture in a way. Right,
Speaker 1: It's almost like you've got the wire mesh but the
Speaker 1: meshes the scaffolding. Yeah, like sculpture, except the piece you're
Speaker 1: creating will hold only urine and it will go inside.
Speaker 1: Somebody's now doing Damian Hurst. Yeah, yeah, paging you. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's very cool. And did you have any
Speaker 1: other thoughts on the pladder? Just said it's awesome, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in general, And he also mentioned that like they had
Speaker 1: they had different sizes and he made a joke. He
Speaker 1: was joking about like, oh, we we ended up using
Speaker 1: a small medium in large, and I bet everybody would
Speaker 1: like the large, which was funny, but it but it
Speaker 1: really underlines something that will probably ramble on about here
Speaker 1: in a minute. But at what point you get to
Speaker 1: choose with your new organs if you do grow an organ?
Speaker 1: Well yeah, And initially though they were doing pretty precise
Speaker 1: like custom custom bladders for people, and then they when
Speaker 1: they started doing in a larger scale, they just started
Speaker 1: doing the sort of one size fits all, depending or
Speaker 1: not one size fits all, but the small medium in large.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a good question, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: because you know, you know how that works out in
Speaker 1: your clothing sometimes, you know, small medium, large is different
Speaker 1: in different places. I don't know what I'm saying there,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm saying because it makes me
Speaker 1: think of if anybody out there has ever watched the
Speaker 1: TV show technically a kids TV show, Invader Zim, there
Speaker 1: is an episode called Dark Harvest where Zim is this
Speaker 1: little alien Boy's an animated show. Uh, this little alien
Speaker 1: who's who's pretending to be a boy in elementary school
Speaker 1: and he's not very good at taking over the earth,
Speaker 1: so he's always hatching these ridiculous schemes, and in this one,
Speaker 1: he's afraid that if he gets headlines, he's gonna end
Speaker 1: up being sent to the school nurse, and the school
Speaker 1: nurse will notice that he doesn't have human organs, and
Speaker 1: then they'll have him, you know, he found out. So
Speaker 1: he starts harvesting organs from all the other children in
Speaker 1: the school, replacing those organs with random objects, uh, from
Speaker 1: just around the school. And eventually he's just bloated with
Speaker 1: organs because he's he's become an organ clutch. He's hoarding organs.
Speaker 1: So is that what we might be doing one day?
Speaker 1: Maybe you can't help, but think of like some like
Speaker 1: really powerful like rich old dude that just has like
Speaker 1: a whole wing of his house, yeah, devoted to to
Speaker 1: growing spare organs. You know, like you'll have like, you know,
Speaker 1: two or three hearts. Um, you know. On we'll be like,
Speaker 1: here's my cooler full of all of my my backup.
Speaker 1: And you know he won't shop off the shelf either,
Speaker 1: and he won't go for that small meeting. We're large bladder,
Speaker 1: it'll be customed. Oh yeah, well yeah, it'll have French
Speaker 1: cuffs on it. But I wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that kidneys a little bit more. If anybody
Speaker 1: does check out that Ted dot com video, it's very
Speaker 1: cool because they show the miniature kidney that they created
Speaker 1: and it's actually producing urine and it's one of the
Speaker 1: strangest things I've seen in a while. It looks like
Speaker 1: a surloin steak with cafeter's protruding from it and then
Speaker 1: a bag collecting the urine. So a lot of this
Speaker 1: is still experimental, but there is one case. Luke Massala,
Speaker 1: he was one patient who benefited from this technology. He
Speaker 1: was born with spina bifida, which affected his bladder and
Speaker 1: kidneys and um at one point. By age ten, he
Speaker 1: had undergone sixteen surgeries and was facing a life time
Speaker 1: of dialysis when he got this experimental surgery with the
Speaker 1: regenerated bladder, and he was among the first patients to
Speaker 1: receive a bladder constructed with his own cells. And today
Speaker 1: he's fine. He's a sophomore at the University of Connecticut
Speaker 1: and he's, according to Ted dot Com, living a normal
Speaker 1: and active lifestyle. I mean, this is really one of
Speaker 1: the things we have to stop and stress it that
Speaker 1: there is there, there's someone out there. There are people
Speaker 1: out there that have organs that have been grown outside
Speaker 1: their body and put back in. Yeah, I mean they exist.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been in awe of that ever since
Speaker 1: I read it that. I mean, just think of that,
Speaker 1: that that we have reached the point where, even in
Speaker 1: a very limited and experimental manner, we can grow an
Speaker 1: organ outside the human body and then put it inside
Speaker 1: the human body and it becomes a part of us. Again,
Speaker 1: ponder that for a moment. Okay, while we take our break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: printing your own organs. Yes, and it says it's going
Speaker 1: to get even more crazy. This presentation is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back oregan printing. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: don't you hate it? Like, you know, we live in
Speaker 1: a big art office. Don't you hate it when you
Speaker 1: go to the printer and somebody's printed out eighteen kidneys
Speaker 1: and they're just lying there on on the on the calendar,
Speaker 1: and you're like, who printed these out? They're just sitting
Speaker 1: here going to waste. They're attracting mice. Yep. Someone puts
Speaker 1: up a nasty note. Yeah, yeah, like hey, jerk. Next
Speaker 1: time you print out eighteen kidneys, make sure you pick
Speaker 1: them up. You see this in our future here at
Speaker 1: the office. Yeah, well, I mean when we talk about
Speaker 1: printing organs or we're not just I mean this is
Speaker 1: literally like you are printing organs. You can take a
Speaker 1: printer three D printer and instead of using ink jet cartridges,
Speaker 1: you use cartridges filled with live cells which are then deposited,
Speaker 1: and you can print a two chamber heart in forty
Speaker 1: minutes and then four to six hours later the muscle
Speaker 1: cells actually contract. Wow, this is this is crazy, I know,
Speaker 1: and it's so cool to see it coming out because
Speaker 1: it's like this little gelatinous mass coming out. It's like
Speaker 1: you're printing with jello and three D and it's just
Speaker 1: like each time across another layer of jello until you
Speaker 1: have this thing and then yeah, then and then like
Speaker 1: hours later starts pumping. Right. But as we know, if
Speaker 1: if this ever reaches a level where we can actually
Speaker 1: print our own organs on our home, you know it's
Speaker 1: just going to be the crappiest printer in the world.
Speaker 1: You have to like reprint your heart five times, keeps
Speaker 1: getting jammed, and you're always out of whichever cellular tissue
Speaker 1: that you use the most. The magenta, I guess, yes,
Speaker 1: the magenta exactly. But those are really cool things that
Speaker 1: have been happening in the last couple of years and
Speaker 1: recently though, one of the most exciting things is something
Speaker 1: called out of post regenerative cells and UM. I guess
Speaker 1: you could even call this section that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about d I Y breasts, Yes, And the reason
Speaker 1: is it's because what they have found research as have
Speaker 1: found that the um parts of the body that have
Speaker 1: adipose fat cells, right, those can actually be suctioned out
Speaker 1: and they can be used to reform breast tissue. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about doing a little life of section, getting
Speaker 1: a little fat and putting it in a centrifuge and
Speaker 1: then sorting out what you want to use, not on
Speaker 1: the same day, right right, Yeah, that's because there's a
Speaker 1: lot to do, right and then later once the cells
Speaker 1: have culture and so on and so forth, you can
Speaker 1: use us to rebuild the breast. And what you would
Speaker 1: want to use this for, ideally is for someone who's
Speaker 1: had a mess ectomy or maybe they have one breast
Speaker 1: that they lost for both, but we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: implications of this in a moment about how it's much
Speaker 1: more than just breast tissue. I just want to mention
Speaker 1: that the company that is doing this is called Story Therapeutics,
Speaker 1: and the CEO, Chris Calhoun, is trying to improve on
Speaker 1: this regenerative medicine that we're talking about, using these stem
Speaker 1: cell enriched adipos fat to heal and rebuild injured or
Speaker 1: damaged organs. So they took this fat and they made
Speaker 1: this huge discovery, and the discover is that the fat
Speaker 1: cells are actually chok full of stem cells. So they
Speaker 1: realized that it probably had uses other than just recreating
Speaker 1: breast tissue. But the reason why they focused on breast
Speaker 1: tissue is because it's a fairly easy thing to do
Speaker 1: with with something that isn't vital to are the way
Speaker 1: our body functions, right, I mean, other than breastfeeding, your
Speaker 1: breast really aren't there for much else, since certare in joke,
Speaker 1: they're What they did is they went to Japan and
Speaker 1: they initially tested uh, this reconstruction with these breast cells
Speaker 1: on Japanese women because it turns out that women in
Speaker 1: that society who had a mastectomy would avoid public baths.
Speaker 1: And then is a huge part public baths or a
Speaker 1: huge part of the culture there. Yeah, many cultures really.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gonna come as kind of a shock
Speaker 1: to especially some of our our u s audiences where
Speaker 1: you know, you go to the y m c A
Speaker 1: or whatever, and and every people were wearing like T
Speaker 1: shirts and the sauna, which is disgusting, by the way. Uh.
Speaker 1: Whereas in many parts of the world, in Asia, uh,
Speaker 1: and still in some parts of Europe, you know, you
Speaker 1: still have a rich and of course in Russia you
Speaker 1: still have a rich bath culture and uh, and in
Speaker 1: certain areas of it, nudity is part of it. And
Speaker 1: therefore when you tend to find in these environments people
Speaker 1: are more comfortable, certainly more comfortable with their nuduty than America. Um.
Speaker 1: Where Again, the idea of being naked at the y
Speaker 1: m c A s is insane and I don't understand
Speaker 1: why I was banned from there. Um. But but but
Speaker 1: but yeah, so so, even even in these environments when
Speaker 1: there would be you know, open to different body types
Speaker 1: and all that, um, the loss of something like that
Speaker 1: could make one feel excluded from a very important part
Speaker 1: of their life. Yeah. To be clear, they weren't banished
Speaker 1: by their people, but they were just they were feeling
Speaker 1: ashamed about their bodies, and so that you know, they
Speaker 1: effectively sort of excommunicated themselves from society in that sense.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, obviously more open to this process
Speaker 1: of recreating the breast tissue, and they actually got pretty
Speaker 1: good result for actually doing something that was quite frank time.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of that was guesswork at the
Speaker 1: beginning of how much you know they should use of
Speaker 1: this proprietary mix of enzymes with the tissue and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, And like you said, it was
Speaker 1: a good test case for this technology because it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the most part. You we're not talking about life
Speaker 1: threatening situation right exactly. Here they are with this They've
Speaker 1: got this idea that these stem cell rich out of
Speaker 1: post fat cells could be used for other purposes. They
Speaker 1: know that it can make bones that they could use
Speaker 1: to repair facial effects and children. But what they are
Speaker 1: really finding out what it what it does great is
Speaker 1: making a new blood supply to tissue, which is really
Speaker 1: important for how we can repair our own vital organs,
Speaker 1: right because that's the problem with aging right now, is
Speaker 1: that as you had said, that our cells do repair
Speaker 1: themselves to a certain degree, but at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: you just can't bridge that supply with blood into the tissue.
Speaker 1: So I just want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this this box again, a box shows up right, the
Speaker 1: magic box that that does all the cool things to
Speaker 1: the cells makes it be able to come like this
Speaker 1: actual organ force. Yeah. Yeah. So this box is basically
Speaker 1: it basically is a cellulation device, and it's a box
Speaker 1: with scaffolding inside, which we've talked about already, and the
Speaker 1: centrifuge and it's center. It separates the adipose tissue from
Speaker 1: stem cells, and then a mix of prop proprietary enzymes
Speaker 1: are added, and the mix is different depending on what
Speaker 1: kind of tissue you want, which is pretty amazing, right,
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like margarita mix. Okay, here you go,
Speaker 1: um or whatever it is that you want. On the
Speaker 1: On the other end of this process, the problem is
Speaker 1: that unlike stem cells, which you could use for like
Speaker 1: two hundred plus kinds of cells in the human body,
Speaker 1: these adipose fat cells can only be used and or
Speaker 1: differentiated into fat, bone and muscle. So it's not an
Speaker 1: end all, be all thing here. But it's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: that it's it's an alternative to having to get stem cells,
Speaker 1: which we know is a difficult process right now, and
Speaker 1: who knows in the future what that will bear out.
Speaker 1: But right now, I mean the fact that you could
Speaker 1: just go and get a tummy tuck, you know, and
Speaker 1: use those on your own rich stem cells from the
Speaker 1: audipose fat for something else perhaps is amazing. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of it. I do too. Now
Speaker 1: the problem is is that there are other companies that
Speaker 1: have gotten in on the game, but their process is
Speaker 1: slightly different, and they're making some claims that are a
Speaker 1: little bit dodgy, like I think I'm imagining Dr Nick
Speaker 1: from The Simpsons. Possibly, Yeah, it's a few stem shoals um.
Speaker 1: But they're saying they're making claims like the cells can
Speaker 1: be used to treat autism and type two diabetes and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So you may have, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're into the subject, you may have seen it
Speaker 1: in the media a little bit. And that's a little
Speaker 1: bit of the dark side, right is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of competition to get this to market. A stem
Speaker 1: cell smoothie is not going to make you healthier, no, no,
Speaker 1: But a Little Wheat Germs shot movie just lovely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there you go. Um. I think that the key
Speaker 1: takeaway from this though, is that right now, the demand
Speaker 1: for organ transplants is has doubled in the last decade,
Speaker 1: and still we have the same amount of organs available.
Speaker 1: So what that means is that, you know, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: stop signing our organing cards on our driver's license here
Speaker 1: in the United States if we want to donate our organs.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so much need out there and that's
Speaker 1: why they're trying to come up with this technology. So
Speaker 1: this isn't going to do away with the organ downing
Speaker 1: process by all means. And you can you can find
Speaker 1: out more about organ donation by going to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. We have an article called how organ
Speaker 1: donation works. We have one called how organ transplants work.
Speaker 1: And if you live in the US, you can go
Speaker 1: to organ donor dot gov to find out more. Other Otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you're in another country, UM would in a number
Speaker 1: of you are, you know, do a search for organ
Speaker 1: donation and then your particular country. But I want to
Speaker 1: add one more thing about about all this, because I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the ways that this could
Speaker 1: be misused or used irresponsibly or is stupidly. And I'm
Speaker 1: instantly think, I get all these emails. Everybody gets all
Speaker 1: these emails about penis enlargement, you know, the junk mails.
Speaker 1: So I can easily imagine a future where the junk
Speaker 1: mail becomes grow your own custom penis, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be really weird future if that comes to past. I know,
Speaker 1: I just started thinking about sea monkeys. Yeah, for some reason.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna follow the logical conclusion to that. Now.
Speaker 1: I didn't the Wired article actually go into the possible
Speaker 1: um cosmetic use of this last technology for breast implants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's actually the competing companies I was talking about.
Speaker 1: That's one of the claims that they're making too. And
Speaker 1: whether or not that's something that will bear out, we
Speaker 1: don't know. But it may be that that's something that
Speaker 1: could help. I suppose, make you look dewey and sixteen
Speaker 1: year old ish, but they won't look like arts. They
Speaker 1: won't look like breast implanted breast. You will not have
Speaker 1: breast on your face. That's what I understand. Poor nipples. Okay,
Speaker 1: not yet, but who knows what the future is gonna
Speaker 1: hold that. That's the thing. It's like we when when
Speaker 1: we when things become possible for humans, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's just an at our time until we start misusing them,
Speaker 1: it's true, or somebody loses a bet. You just had
Speaker 1: to bring that dystopian shade down on them. Yeah, yea,
Speaker 1: I understand. Well let's see, let's turn our backs from
Speaker 1: that then, and uh take a look at some quick
Speaker 1: listener mail. I think I have a few to choose
Speaker 1: from here. Well, we have some listener mail here from John.
Speaker 1: John writes in and John says, well, what a coincidence
Speaker 1: that you have back to back podcast on aliens and
Speaker 1: platyplods pla platyplods the plural of platypus um. I've always
Speaker 1: wondered if Australia was a genetic playground for aliens, with
Speaker 1: the platypus being their greatest creation. No offense to kangaroos,
Speaker 1: Iguala bears bears right, I have because really yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been watching the a rather well done series on Netflix
Speaker 1: about ancient Aliens, and they talk about the aliens wiping
Speaker 1: out all genetic experiments. Chamiras Sphinx in a great flight.
Speaker 1: I enjoy the show John, So um mmmmm, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. I mean, clearly the platypus is is a
Speaker 1: perfect creation, but as we discussed in the podcast, I
Speaker 1: think it's farm or likely it just evolve that way.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Unassuming, right, you would never think like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's the alien creation. Oh you're with the aliens,
Speaker 1: now show it for a podcast day. We've voice sound
Speaker 1: a little different, supposedly because of the cold. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: it's really me, honest. Let's see. I have another one
Speaker 1: here about the platypo platypose you knew it's me because
Speaker 1: I set nipples. Here's a letter from Jeremy. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: love the Platypus show. I was surprised that you didn't
Speaker 1: bring up the character Perry, the platypus from the Disney
Speaker 1: show Phineas and Ferb. Perry is a household pet who
Speaker 1: lives a double life as a double oh seven parody agent.
Speaker 1: P You even seem to be on the verge of
Speaker 1: it when you were discussing it's venomous quality. Maybe I
Speaker 1: just watch way more TV with my kids than I should.
Speaker 1: Keep up the great word, Jeremy, I was not familiar
Speaker 1: with the show. I think that's interesting saying that we
Speaker 1: we followed the same logic. Yeah, and uh in just
Speaker 1: one note, um, I can't remember I might uh spoke.
Speaker 1: In the past, I have occasionally said venom when I
Speaker 1: mean poison or poison when I mean venom, and the
Speaker 1: two words are, of course not interchangeable, and to do
Speaker 1: so is elegant variation, which is the whole another thing.
Speaker 1: But anyway, venomous animals just to refresh, store toxin internally
Speaker 1: and release them through biting or stinging, uh, such as
Speaker 1: with a platypus, whereas poisonous animals usually secrete toxins through
Speaker 1: their skin and then if you touch them or heat them, uh,
Speaker 1: then you get the poison. Any There you go, venomous, hardcore, venomous, poisonous.
Speaker 1: But that's out there. But the real take home is
Speaker 1: that they are magical. They're not really magical, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so hey, yeah, perhaps if you if you go to
Speaker 1: the right places, if you know the right spot. Um. So,
Speaker 1: if you have anything to share with us, especially about
Speaker 1: do it yourself organs of out the current technology, about
Speaker 1: where it's going or where it may lead us. We
Speaker 1: love to hear about it, so just let us know
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. For starters, you can find us
Speaker 1: on both of those as Blow the Mind, or you
Speaker 1: could go more long form and you could email us
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.