Questionable Ethics On 3D Scanning Services for Bone Printing
3D scanning services help in a difficult situation
We are all in love with new
technology; we go for the latest iPhone, AirPods, and gadgets to make life
easier. Technology has advanced so far beyond our reach and out of our control
that there are now controversial ethical issues involved when using the latest
technology.
How does someone maintain a
sense of privacy in a technological world that sees absolutely everything? How
does it feel when your skeletal structure, your very being, is downloaded and
saved in the cloud? These are all ethical questions that are now surfacing due
to the rise in creating bone replicas through 3D scanning Services.
3D scanning Services is the
process of moving real-world objects into cyberspace, it can collect all sorts
of data. This includes appearance, dimensions, and shape. 3D scanning services
started in the 1960s and, since then, has come a long way, storing all of the data
in the cloud.
Researchers for museums and
anthropologists have found that they can create actual bone replicas using 3D
scanners, which is also a very cheap process considering all of the work it
takes. Each scan can give exact breaks, cuts, dimensions, the accuracy of using
a 3D scanner is unbeatable. Making bone replicas by hand is tedious work, and
not always accurate.
The laws on replicating
bones can be tricky, especially when we are talking about human remains. Each
country has its own set of laws on how human remains can be used by law for
research. It’s a tricky area and is currently mostly limited to museum
collections containing human remains.
Ericka L’Abbé, a forensic
anthropologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, states, “When
someone downloads these skulls and reconstructs them, it becomes their data,
their property.”
This becomes a major ethical
problem when concerning human remains. Owning data is not against the law, but
owning the right to a person’s skeletal structure, and a replica of someone’s
body can raise some concerning issues if the research team isn’t honest. Anyone
can take these replicas and use it for private use, and this could cause some
serious violations.
Ericka L’Abbé is currently
working in Gauteng Provence in South Africa with the local police to identify
bodies that are discovered throughout the region. More than 20,000 unidentified
bodies are found from murder in this region. Creating replicas to study these
bodies can help identify the human remains giving them back to their family
without destroying the original bone structure; this can be incredibly
important to some families. But what do you do with the data once the original
is sent back home? How do you keep this data ethically?
In some developing
countries, medical students and researchers don’t have the option to study
skeletal structure any other way except for through CAD (computer-aided design)
programs. 3D scanning services give these students and researchers
opportunities they would not have otherwise.
3D scanning services have
made research more accessible, but ethical dilemmas must be solved to take the
research further and help countries to the fullest extent with the best
outcome.