????這是一個陰暗的想法，只有未來主義者才會產生這樣的聯想。因此當3D打印公司Makerbot創始人兼首席執行官布利?佩蒂斯拋出這個問題時，我并不感到意外。今年夏初，在布魯克林的北邊藝術節（Northside Festival）上，我詢問他關于3D打印器官的問題，他回答說，直到自動駕駛汽車上市，3D打印人體器官才會成為現實。兩項富于未來氣息的技術就這樣意外地聯系在了一起。

????佩蒂斯說：“自動駕駛汽車就要來了，而目前，人體器官的最佳來源是車禍。也就是說，如果你需要進行器官移植，你必須得等待有人出車禍。獲得遇難者的器官后你就會好起來。”我說，這種看法可夠陰暗的。

????佩蒂斯回答道：“隨時都有人在車禍中喪生，但我們似乎很少談論這個大問題。多少有些荒唐。不過，最有意思的事情是，如果我們能夠減少車禍數量和喪生人數，那么我們真的會遇到另一個棘手的大問題，那就是‘人體器官從哪兒來?’我覺得在解決自動駕駛汽車的問題之前，3D打印人體器官并不會真的實現。接下來的問題將是器官替換。”

????他指出，3D打印人體器官并非不可能，但原材料方面有一些難點。“現在的方法是取來肝細胞，把它們弄成肝臟的形狀，再盼著它們生長發育成肝臟。這就是3D打印人體器官的思路。”佩蒂斯說，難點在于正確地“取來肝細胞”，隨后才是真的進行3D打印。

????自動駕駛汽車并不像大家想的那么遙遠。這種以前只出現在科幻小說里的東西現在已經開始四處游走，只不過活動范圍很小，僅限于內華達州、佛羅里達州、加利福尼亞州和密歇根州。以前人們奚落硅谷時，總會開自動駕駛汽車的玩笑，而現在，它已經是谷歌（Google）公司園區里的一款代步工具。

????自動駕駛汽車的應用范圍正在擴大。英國交通部上個月宣布稱，將在明年之前允許自動駕駛汽車在英國上路。愛荷華州的某個區也在最近的一次研討會上表示，將允許自動駕駛汽車在本地行駛——舉辦這次會議自然也是為了吸引谷歌和其他科技公司入駐這一地區。加州機動車輛管理局則一直在設法擴大監管范圍，以便自動駕駛汽車成為普通交通工具。

????這樣做的潛在好處很難讓人熟視無睹。在美國，每年有3萬人死于交通事故。考慮到其中90%的車禍是由人為失誤造成，而且大約40%的事故緣于酒后駕車或疲勞駕駛，把操控汽車的任務交給計算機會讓我們受益匪淺。

????華盛頓非營利智囊機構伊諾交通中心(Eno Center for Transportation)在2013年進行的研究表明，如果美國10%的車輛可以自動駕駛，交通事故就會減少21.1萬起，1100條生命就能得到挽救。如果自動駕駛汽車的比例達到90%，就可以避免420萬起車禍，2.17萬人將因此獲救。

????不過，技術進步經常帶來意想不到的影響。正是出于這個原因，這些預測數據印證了佩蒂斯的觀點，即駕車變得更安全,將對器官捐獻產生不利影響。除了自然死亡，交通事故是器官捐獻的最大來源。美國衛生及公共服務部（Department of Health & Human Services）的數據顯示，1994年以來，機動車事故在器官捐獻中所占的比重為16%。

????器官捐獻者的數量已經呈下降趨勢。自動駕駛汽車得到更廣泛的應用后，器官供應的壓力會變得更大。美國交通事故死亡人數在1969年達到55043人的最高點，隨后不斷下降。原因有很多，比如酒駕致死人數減少，更多的人佩戴安全帶，安全氣囊變得更有效以及駕車人次減少。

????等待器官移植的病人一直比真正接受移植的病人多，以上種種因素讓這個差距不斷拉大。美國衛生及公共服務部的數據表明，目前美國需要進行器官移植的人數超過12.3萬，而且每天都會有18個人在等待中逝去。20年來，等待器官移植的人數逐年增多；而在過去10年中，每年進行的器官移植手術一直穩定在2.8萬例。雖然和其他致命但可預防的疾病相比，這個數字相形見絀——舉例來說，美國疾病控制與預防中心（Centers for Disease Control）估計，每年有44.3萬人死于抽煙——但它足以讓所有人對今后的趨勢感到警惕。但愿3D打印技術能幫助我們扭轉這種趨勢。（財富中文網）

????譯者：Charlie

????It’s a dark thought, and the sort of thing only a futurist would think of. Which is why I’m not surprised that Bre Pettis, founder and CEO of the 3D printing company Makerbot, brought it up. When I asked him about 3D-printed organs earlier this summer at the Northside Festival, a conference in Brooklyn, he told me that 3D-printed body parts won’t become a reality until autonomous vehicles arrive to market. It makes for a surprising connection between two futuristic technologies.

????“The self-driving car is coming, and right now, our best supply of organs comes from car accidents,” he said. “So, if you need an organ you just wait for somebody to have an accident, and then you get their organ and you’re better.” I suggested that was a dark way of looking at it.

????His response: “We have this huge problem that we sort of don’t talk about, that people die all the time from car accidents. It’s kind of insane. But the most interesting thing is, if we can reduce accidents and deaths, then we actually have a whole other problem on our hands of, ‘Where do we get organs?’ I don’t think we’ll actually be printing organs until we solve the self-driving car issue. The next problem will be organ replacement.”

????It’s not impossible to 3D-print an organ, he said, but there are challenges around raw materials. “Right now you take liver goo, and you squeeze liver goo into the shape of a liver and it grows together and hopefully becomes a liver. That’s the idea of 3D printing organs,” he said. The challenge, he said, will be getting the science of the “liver goo” right, before the actual printing part even comes into play.

????The self-driving car isn’t as far off as you might think. What once existed only the realm of science fiction is now roving around—albeit in an extremely limited fashion—in Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan. What was once an easy punch line in parodies of Silicon Valley is now a fixture on Google’s corporate campus.

????Adoption continues. Last month the U.K.’s Department of Transport announced that it would allow self-driving cars onto British streets by next year. A county in Iowa recently announced—at a symposium designed to attract Google and other tech companies to its region, naturally—that it would allow driverless cars on its streets. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has been pushing to get broader regulations in place to allow self-driving cars on public roads.

????The potential benefits are hard to ignore. Each year 30,000 people die in traffic collisions in the U.S. Considering that 90% of U.S. auto collisions are blamed on human error—some 40% are the result of factors such as alcohol or fatigue—we have a lot to gain by outsourcing the task of driving to computers.

????If 10% of vehicles were self-driving, it could reduce the number of accidents by 211,000 and in turn save 1,100 lives,according to a 2013 study by the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C. If 90% of vehicles were autonomous, an estimated 4.2 million accidents would be prevented and 21,700 lives would be saved.

????Technological advances often come with unintended consequences, though, which is why these predictions support Pettis’ case that organ donations would be adversely impacted by safer driving. Motor vehicle accidents are the largest contributor to organ donations after natural-cause deaths. Since 1994, 16% of all organ donations came from motor vehicle accidents, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

????The inventory pressure from increasing adoption of self-driving cars will add to an already shrinking pool of organ donors. Traffic deaths have been in decline since 1969, when they peaked at 55,043. The drop occurred for a number of reasons: drunk driving deaths have fallen, seat belt use has increased, air bags are more effective, and we drive less.

????All of this has led to a widening gap between the number of patients on the organ wait list and the number of people who actually receive transplants. More than 123,000 people in the U.S. are currently in need of an organ, and 18 people die each day waiting, according to the Department of Health & Human Services. Though the wait list has grown each year for the past two decades, the number of transplants per year has held steady in the last decade, at around 28,000. While that number is still dwarfed by other fatal but preventable situations—the Centers for Disease Control estimate that443,000 people die each year from smoking, for example—it’s enough to make anyone wary of the direction in which the trend is going, and hopeful that 3D printing technology can help turn it around.