01 May 2007
Biotechnology
After reading this book, I am extremely fascinated with biotechnology and the means that it takes to replace human organs with plastics, metals and circuits. The human organs are extremely intricate in design and seem almost impossible to design from scratch. Even the artificial heart can only be used for a maximum of a few years before the patient needs a real heart. The artificial eye transplant does not give even close to the natural eyesight. What impressed me the most was how fairly significant the cochlear implant emulates natural hearing. Although I am assuming some depth in hearing has to be lost and can sound scratchy at times. The music plug in play seemed to be very progressive. Its hard still to this day use technology to replace vital organs such as the kidneys, heart, and etc. A dialysis machine can keep a patient on a machine for so long before the patient would require a real kidney donor. Replacing the eyesight is another tough challenge, current technology allows for extremely pixilated/grainy pictures of your surroundings. Just think if it’s really possible to replace the human brain with plastics and circuits. To me biotechnology is so important but not looked at the correct way. We don’t need wires, and plastics in our bodies, we need to cultivate actual organs from other cells such as stem cells in order for technology in biological sciences prosper.
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4 comments:
The idea you posed at the end of your entry opens a whole new can of worms with a lot of people. While I agree that biotechnology is cool, I do not believe that it is advanced enough at this point to give a realistic/long lasting feel for life. A hundred years from now the technology will be advanced enough to foster a set of quality organs from just electronics and valves. An alternative solution is that nanomachines will be able to fix what is going wrong with the organ at the source, removing the need for artificial organs.
I am interested to hear what life is like with these bionic eyes. I can not imagine how they could accurately depict something as evolved as our vision with machines and signals. Being blind is a terrible option but it may not even be worth it to get these implants.
I agree with both of you. I mean it just is hard to have plastics and metals all in your body working to replace the beautifully soft and perfectly working organs we are born with. It is forgien to have something in your body so hard and so unnatural. This is why I think alot of the time these things dont work out too well, and if they do its for a short time. I agree with the stem cell stuff but it is far too over my head to get into it. I will probably do some further studying up on the subject!
I would agree with you. We do and are looking into Stem cell research for complete organ replacement. Recently I read from BBC news about the use of sheep to cultivate human organs. They used stems cells of a human to do so. They are basically using the sheep as bio-plants manufacturing organs. The problem is in the ethics of such research but I agree with the philosophy "if you save a life you save the world." The sheep are considered to be 15% human 85% sheep which makes a case for the morality of using hte animals for such tasks and then killing the hybrid human to save another human. In this sense the line is becoming blurred and these are serious bio-ethical decisions that need to be made by the collective society.
I can easily see why one would think that instead of replacing organs with technological equipment such as plastic and wires, we should find the answers in stem cells and or other biological cells. Of course it would allow for a more natural cure instead of making one feel a little more like a robot, but I think that with time we will begin to discover ways of using both means of cures, plastic and wires and natural cells from such organisms. It is still extremely impressive that we have the knowledge and capability to perform the types of surgeries that we do today. I am always amazed when watching television shows such as House or Grey’s Anatomy because of the surgeries they perform, but they never show such technological implants like adding a device that connects to one’s brain to allow him to hear. Some things just make you think about how far we’ve come and wonder how life will be in the next 10-20 years.
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