4 ms·
>It would be cool if we could inject some artificial 3D printing thingies in the gum that feed on nutrients from your body and slowly create a new tooth as prog
by tsol 4y ago
>It would be cool if we could inject some artificial 3D printing thingies in the gum that feed on nutrients from your body and slowly create a new tooth as programmed beforehand.
Hmm, that sounds just like a cell. In fact it would probably be easiest to find a way to turn tooth regeneration on. Other animals have it, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to except that we haven't figured out how yet.
I agree though and I've thought that before-- something about the dentists office is especially crude. But then again what do you expect when we have chunks of mineral in our face we use to mash food with? Teeth themselves are rather crude
- hackerfromthefu 4y agoThis is really a trap I'd like to point out. We often, or usually, look at natural systems without seeing the full picture. This hubris of thinking we understand it when we don't understand many aspects of it is dangerous. Teeth are not crude, that's just a reductionist understanding of them, or lacking understanding of the many integrated systems they are dynamically part of. i.e. they have to do the right thing, at the right time, with many other aspects of the body. They grow, resize, even regrow, adapt to spaces and situations, handle living in organic environment with a garden of living bacteria etc, dynamically store and make available minerals and maybe other building blocks for the rest of the body, have a lifecycle, have many organic components, and likely more features I am not aware of!