Japan firm offers mums-to-be 3D printed unborn infants If your partner is up the duff, and you want to record the pregnancy for posterity, you could keep the ultrasound pictures and even get a cast made of your missus’ extended abdomen. Or, if you live in Japan, you can get a 3D printed foetus. For a mere ¥100,000 (£764), one Japanese company will squeeze your partner into a MRI …
is exactly the same as having an ultrasound pic (sonagram for the peeps across the pond) or those new videoes.
I'd say there's quite a dramatic difference between having a video or printed picture and having a 3d model of your baby personally, but YMMV.
We were offered a 3D scan, but it was £100 so we decided we'd be quite happy with the ultrasound pic instead (especially as the sample 3D's scans were all lacking texture so looked quite scary)
Though I can't imagine my pregnant missus putting up with an hour of a 1.5 teslar magnet turning over every few seconds. Or for that matter going for an hour without needing to pee. If they offered it here for the same price I'd go for it though.
Back in the beginning of MRI in the UK(or NMR as it was called back then) I managed to contribute to the science in a way no-one really expected from the work experience lad. I'd got good and properly drunk the night before and when they offered to scan me (given the noise not a great idea for a person so hungover they could barely see) I went into the machine to the tones of Handel's requiem and much laughter on their part. I managed to sleep almost immediately and stayed stone still in the same place for the next 12 hours sleeping it off. Turns out they use body fat (of which I am amply supplied) to focus the machine (a process called shimming) and they spent that time refining the shimming programs and brought them forward by around 6-12 months, they were eager to explain as they tried to get me drunk afterwards...
About 20 years ago, a friend doing a physics PhD at Heriot-Watt told me a wonderful story about an early NMR spectrometer, a research physicist, and a guaranteed anti-magnetic Rolex wristwatch.
He did get a replacement, eventually.
I can't help but wonder if Rolex have amended their guarantees slightly.
It wouldn't surprise me - though I doubt they were expecting that level of magnet :-)
There was a local bank near the Royal Brompton Heart and Lung hospital, that all of the NMR researchers used as it was very relaxed about letting them have new bank cards every so often. You only had to go near the machine with a wallet to wipe all the cards in it.. I think with chip and pin it might have less effect but then the machines were a pretty thorough way of ruining your night out.
The other thing you could do on one machine that opened at both ends was to throw in a ferrous pen and watch as it flew in and out of the tube only to eventually hover in the middle. Good times...
There is something completely unwholesome here. A human foetus is something that nature hides from us until it is time to make its appearance into the world: nature usually does things for its own good reasons.
What possible relevance could having a plastic foetus have for anyone ? Will it get passed around at parties ? Imagine being handed one of these damned things and the mother saying "just look how cute Alison was when she was a foetus".
So what's next.
* Keeping little bottles of sperm in order to say , "one of these sperms made the rush forward with the one from which you were born".
* Meet George the "Inflatible feotus".
* Why not plastic gonadss ( oops the Yanks already have these - Truck Nuts I believe they call them).
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