10 Ridiculously Illegal Things You Can Make With A 3-D Printer

3. A Virus

Yes, a virus. It's only about having the right printer that can add layers of an appropriate material. In this instance you would need a printer that can synthetically replicate biological substances. It does exist and a company called Cambrian Genomics has already demonstrated it in action. Theirs is a new type of specialised DNA printer combining printing with re-sequencing that recently improved the accuracy and cost of DNA reproduction. It will soon be possible to produce many, or just one, personalised medical treatments hidden away inside custom-built viruses. Equally, you might use it to create entirely new organisms. The machine is yet to go to market, but it is essentially just 3-D printing. The medical benefits are massive. If there were a child with a very rare, unidentified genetic disease then by resequencing his or her genomes you could identify the disease. Using the DNA printer you could, at a very low cost, replicate it synthetically and research a solution. This type of work is currently highly specialised and expensive; however, the printer might prove to be the very instrument upon which a brand new explosion of research is generated. Alternatively, if you were unethically interested in creating novel organisms for more dubious reasons, such as germ warfare, you might develop other radical uses for it. Just saying.