Like cryptocurrency and GOOP, three-dimensional printing has adherents so passionate they border on the fanatic.
But unlike the cults of digital currency (the value of which is inextricably linked to the for-real money tied to the central banks it’s supposed to replace) and bunk wellness cures repackaged and sold with Hollywood star power, there’s at least something tangible about 3D printers and the products they create. Look: Here is a thing, made of polymer. My 3D printer made it.
And very much unlike volatile money and curing cancer with love, 3D-printing technology has rapidly advanced from a fad with questionable utility into a phenomenon with real potential for the rest of us—but only in certain, select applications.
It may be cool to 3D-print an office or a house, but it’s hard to argue that the appeal advances beyond pure novelty. There is no need to use a giant and costly printer, rigged specifically for that purpose, to spit out a polymer house. We have houses, and we have construction workers who build them. It’s a whole industry (for now, at least).
Having a 3D printer available to create pharmaceutical drugs on demand, on the other hand, is not only a big step towards a reality bent towards Star Trek but could be of immense value to far-flung places in need of hard-to-obtain medical supplies.
And this is very much a thing.
The FDA approved the first 3D-printed drug in 2015. More recently, researchers at the University of Glasgow’s School of Chemistry published a paper in which they explain how “drugs on demand” can be created anywhere in the world using a “chemical digital code” and a 3D-printer.
The key is assigning a