Anthony Atala: Printing a Human Kidney - Essay Example

Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney Anthony Atala is a practicing surgeon and researcher in the field of regenerative medicine. His current work focuses on growing new human cells, tissues and organs. Anthony’s speech is presented to an audience in an auditorium with the use of visual aids which give more detail and understanding to the audience on the subject that he is discussing. His speech addresses the use of 3D printing technology in printing a human kidney and other body organs. In his speech, he strongly uses ethos and logic to persuade his audience in comparison to the use of pathos (Koller 125). It is evident from the speech that Anthony is gifted in the medical field both in experience and in knowledge. In his speech, ethos is used by Anthony in the sense that he is vastly knowledgeable on the subject of organ printing. This is extrinsic ethos which readily ensures that the audience does not doubt the credibility of his knowledge on the subject. From his explanation after the first forty seconds of the speech on the current use regenerative medicine, it is evident that he has first-hand experience with the subject. I quote, “It really involves many different areas. You can use, actually, scaffolds, biomaterials -- theyre like the piece of your blouse or your shirt -- but specific materials you can actually implant in patients and they will do well and help you regenerate. Or we can use cells alone, either your very own cells or different stem cell populations (Koller 165). Or we can use both. We can use, actually, biomaterials and the cells together. And thats where the field is today.” He furthers his ethos by delving into history and talking about the origin of regenerative medicine which was coined by the author Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize winner in his book, The Culture of Organs. He is also keen to note the drawbacks that regenerative medicine has faced such as; the design of materials that could be incorporated into the body and function well over time, but they can now do it readily. There was also a challenge was inability to grow cells outside the human body albeit the challenge has been solved over the last 20 years. The final drawback was vascularity which is actual blood flow into the organs which allows them to survive in the body. He also uses visual cues in his talk so as to ensure that his audience learns more (Tsou 123). In his speech, Anthony also uses pathos to evoke emotion from his audience on the subject matter. He achieves this in his preamble in which he states the current health crisis. I quote, “Theres actually a major health crisis today in terms of the shortage of organs. The fact is that were living longer. Medicine has done a much better job of making us live longer, and the problem is, as we age, our organs tend to fail more, and so currently there are not enough organs to go around. In fact, in the last 10 years, the number of patients requiring an organ has doubled, while in the same time, the actual number of transplants has barely gone up.” This elicits the emotion of fear in the audience in the sense that they are uncertain of what can happen to them in the event that their organs fail (Turkle 125). He also uses pathos to invoke love and pity on the audience by showing them a video of Luke Massella towards the end of his talk. Ten years ago, Luke was really sick and very miserable sine he was born with spinal bifida and his bladder and kidneys were not working. He could barely perform any sporting activities but after receiving a printed kidney his life got back to normal and he could even wrestle. Luke is called to the stage and they meet after 10 years which was when he conducted the surgery on him (Turkle 155). Luke is now all grown up, in his sophomore year in college and highly congratulates the work of Anthony Atala which changed his life. This makes the audience relate to Luke’s situation and feel pity on those who have failing organs in addition to feeling love and appreciation for Anthony’s work. Logos is highly used in Anthony’s speech as he takes the audience through some of the procedures used in regenerative medicine. Logos is used to persuade the audience into acceptance of the procedures and also see the practicality of using regenerated organs in patients. In the seventh minute of his speech, I quote, “This is actually a desktop inkjet printer, but instead of using ink, were using cells. And you can actually see here the print head going through and printing this structure, and it takes about 40 minutes to print this structure. And theres a 3D elevator that then actually goes down one layer at a time each time the print head goes through. And then finally youre able to get that structure out. You can pop that structure out of the printer and implant it. And this is actually a piece of bone that Im going to show you in this slide that was actually created with this desktop printer and implanted as you see here. That was all new bone that was implanted using these techniques.” The same can be done with a kidney but the kidney takes seven hours to print (Koller 135). The speech was very educational on regenerative medicine. It encompassed the advances that have been made in the field, their practical applications and the longevity of regenerated body parts as seen in the case of Luke Massella. However, the talk did not fully demonstrate nor discuss the drawbacks that could happen in using regenerated body parts. One can never be too sure of what to expect from using a regenerated body part, for instance, the body might reject it. The expenses were also not addressed in the talk hence the procedure may be limited to those who can afford it. I gathered basic knowledge on the procedures of regenerative medicine such as what materials are used, the machines used and possible future advancements in the field. Use of more practical applications with concrete results would have made this talk more convincing to the audience (Koller 165). Work Cited Koller, D. "What we are learning from online education, TED Talks." (2014). Tsou, Andrew, et al. "A community of curious souls: an analysis of commenting behavior on TED talks videos." PloS one 9.4 (2014): e93609. Turkle, Sherry. "Connected, but alone." TED talks (2012). Read More