- Hannibal Lecter was right.
You don't need your skin.
That's how you set the tone for a video.
The human body is an amazing thing with hundreds of
moving parts that are necessary to survive.
But what happens when we lose one of those parts?
Whelp, that's where science and technology step in.
With artificial prosthesis and regrown cells and organs.
With all the advancements that we make year after year
we are literally becoming closer and closer to
becoming a race of cyborgs.
That being said, it's time to look a little deeper
at the human body and determine which pieces
are replaceable.
These are 10 body parts that science can replace.
Number one are heart muscles.
As stem cells are revolutionizing the medical field,
they bring with them the ability to replace incredibly
important pieces of our bodies.
In 2013, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh
made history by developing heart tissue that could
actually beat on its own at the rate of 40-50
beats per minute.
Now while we're still a few years from a full beating heart
created in a lab, replacing heart muscles is possible
right now.
Well that's good because I love my bacon.
So you know, it's just a matter of time before this
one gives out.
So, hurry up science.
Number two are ears.
While stem cells are needed for certain replacements,
some body parts are, wait for it, printable.
That's right.
Advances in technology have resulted in the ability
to now print replacement body parts.
Scientists working to restore injured soldiers to as close
to their former selves as possible discovered they could
restore symmetrical faces by 3-D printing ears.
One injured soldier, at the Lackland Air Force Base,
who lost both of his ears had his father's ears
recreated from images and now hears the world through them.
Combined with internal hearing implants, losing an ear is
no longer as devastating as it used to be.
Next we'll be able to have satellite ears, you'll be able
to hear what the person's saying about you from across
the room.
Bitch, I hear you.
Number three are bones.
Severe fractures and disease have claimed many bones
from people, and not that long ago, bone issues meant
either death or a complete change in lifestyle for those
suffering from them.
Well, not long ago, doctors began replacing bones with
ones from other parts of the body or from cadavers.
More recently, ceramics and metallic alloys have become
replacement options, but developments all over the world
have resulted in recreating skeletal pieces from
injectable bone.
This material is soft until it's exposed to the inner body
and can replace a piece of your bone.
The injectable bone remains soft until it is exposed
to the inner body.
I'm not touching that one.
Number four is the pancreas.
Diabetics often live very routinely based lives,
many of them consistently taking pills or injecting
needles and checking their blood sugar levels frequently.
They've become this way because their pancreas no longer
creates enough insulin, an agent your body needs to break
down sugars.
The artificial pancreas, however, currently in human trials
in France, is an advanced insulin pump that regulates
glucose levels in the body by producing insulin
automatically, even when the person is fast asleep.
This is going to save so many lives, and not only that,
but people won't have to jab themselves with needles
anymore.
If I ever got this, I would not survive because I don't
do well with needles.
Number five are bionic limbs.
Losing a limb is absolutely devastating.
Of course, having to deal with the absence of something
that you're used to having, but luckily advancements
in technology have provided amazing artificial prosthesis
that can actually take signals from the human brain
and perform a desired task with a robotic hand or leg.
While such technology has been around for a while,
it used to only apply to arms.
That was until 2012 when Zac Vawter, a software engineer
living in Seattle who lost his right leg in a motorcycle
accident was outfitted with the first ever thought
controlled bionic leg.
In order to test it, designers had him climb up 103 floors
worth of stairs, ascending a Chicago skyscraper.
These things are just gonna get more and more advanced
until we just end up with bionic arms, legs, we're just
gonna be like (imitates robot).
The Olympics will be useless.
Number six are hands.
Sticking to bionic limbs for a moment, this next entry
not only allows signals to be relayed to a prosthesis,
but also sends information back.
In this case, the incredible sense of touch.
Like, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.
At the University of Chicago, researchers have developed
a bionic hand that not only functions by way of thought,
but through electrical signals sent to the subject's
brain allowing the sensation that they're feeling whatever
their prosthetic is, well, touching.
Stimulating the brains of subjects, the team found that
they responded the same way that a person with their
own flesh and blood hand would react.
I'm telling you, Skynet.
It's comin'.
Number seven are eyes.
When it comes to our senses, our eyesight is arguably
one of, if not the most, important one that we possess.
Sadly there are many who don't get to experience that
sense and, until recently, nothing could be done.
However, at the Weill Cornell Medical College,
scientists have been testing out artificial eyes since 2013,
and have made amazing strides restoring sight to bling mice
and monkeys.
More recently, several institutions around the globe
have reported successful human tests.
Now these implants do differ based on how the sight was
lost, many of them working much like an artificial ear
by sending electrical signals to the brain.
As a YouTuber who makes videos almost every day on his
vlog channel, I'm looking forward to the day where there's
bionic eyes that record video.
That would revolutionize a lot of industries.
What, vlogging.
I don't know what you're thinking of.
Number eight are fingers.
While there have been many forms of artificial hands
and fingers, none are quite as amazing or make us more
like a computer than the fingers developed by Finnish
programmer Jerry Gelava.
Jerry lost one of his own real fingers in a motorcycle
accident back in 2008.
Building a prosthetic digit, Jerry now has a finger that
can convert from a normal looking piece of a hand
to a two gigabyte USB thumb drive.
Seriously though, that's amazing.
Peeling back the fake fingernail, he reveals a USB device
that can plug into a computer.
In 2015, there are a number of people who have opted
to replace their missing parts with ones that not only
serve their original purpose, but also have amazing
upgrades.
Even as far as implanted RFID tags that open doors and
turn on lights when the person enters an area.
Hey John, you got that document?
Oh, you don't' have a USB?
Give me a moment.
Okay, you shouldn't do that if you have a USB for a thumb.
That would be how you lose friends.
Number nine is bladder.
And now let's talk about pee pee for a while.
On January 20, 1999, the first successful artificial
bladder transplant took place on a dog.
By 2001 another replacement bladder became the first
complex human organ to be grown in a lab and placed
inside a person.
Today we call that process an orthotopic neobladder
procedure.
Scientists grow these organs using cells from the patient's
existing bladder, often taken during surgeries
to remove bladder damage.
If the organ is too damaged to be repaired, doctors can
actually take tissue from the small intestine and
bioengineer a brand new urinary bladder and replace
the damaged one with little risk of rejection.
People are gonna be peein' for ever.
And number ten is skin.
Just skin Steven.
The easiest organ to damage isn't your heart or lungs,
it's your skin.
When it comes to severe damage from things such as
burns or disease, if you lost your skin, you would need
a graft and that meant taking it from a family member,
a cadaver or somewhere less important on your body.
Recent advancements means that today new skin can be grown.
Using biopsied skin cells taken from the patient,
doctors can now grow a sheet of new skin in a lab.
Alternatively, thanks to Stanford's Zhenan Bao,
there's a brand new form of artificial skin available.
With organic transistors and solar cells to let it stay
powered, this prosthesis is super flexible, durable
and very sensitive.
So if you hurt your skin or, you know, are attacked
by a Hannibal Lecter-like character, looking for your
organs, it's not all so bad.
And that's all for this video guys.
If you got something out of this and you learned a little
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my next video.
And I will see you guys then.
Peace!