Interesting Article...http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/health/2002-01-23-cover-organs.htm
01/22/2002 - Updated 09:54 PM ET
Nature's blueprint to growing organs
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Organ crisis
"The organ shortage is getting worse, not better."
— Jay Vacanti, director of organ transplantation, Massachusetts General Hospital
Inspiration drifted into view one day when Jay Vacanti least expected it Watching his children splash in the surf off a Cape Cod beach, Vacanti saw in a bit of floating seaweed — in its intricate, branching structure — an ideal template for making the first living, lab-grown human organs. Vacanti, a pediatric surgeon and director of organ transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, is more acutely aware than most of the desperate need for replacement hearts, livers, lungs and other tissues. He has seen far too many of his own patients, children poised on the brink of life, die for lack of a transplant.
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