This was one in a series of talks organised by the Singapore Science Centre. A free buffet spread (not much to shout about, but hey it's free) and even wine is provided to lubricate discussion. The idea is that everyone can ask whatever they want of the speaker including ethical/political/social type questions. We even had a few children in the single digits, though I doubt they were following the discussion.

The speaker, Vladimir Mironov, is a medical doctor and research scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina. He has pioneered techniques of robotically placing aggregates of cells on specially treated slides, which then grow together, more or less keeping the shapes they'd been put in. In this way, he has managed to obtain facsimiles of branching blood vessels and even kidney tubules. Other researchers coined the term organ printing, because they adapted ink jet printers to squirt the cells onto the slides.

Mironov is currently seeking a US1 billion dollar grant to build a factory, so he can produce artificial kidneys. It seems a bit early in the day though, as he's only able to get 3-4 cell lengths of artificial vessel together. Looks like it'll be some time yet before we have kidneys-on-demand!

Some questions were posed about the ethics of the process, but noone asked what effect potential immortalit y could have on societies and individuals? Mind you, the speaker was wonderfully politically incorrect about religion and its effects on society, so maybe that was a good thing!

Imagine a Taiwan parliament moment at the Singapore Science Centre!