NYTimes Year in Ideas

jonbrewer writes "The New York Times is back again with their "Year in Ideas" and one that Slashdot missed this year was the RatBot. As featured in the BBC and Business 2.0 earlier this year, these critters are trained to navigate mazes based on remote stimuli. Ethical? Doubtful. Cool? Yes."

Comments

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[kypper]

Nope, no cruelty at all. Aside from drilling holes in the rat's skull, attaching wires into his brain, and mounting a control box permanently behind his head.

The brain has no pain receptors. Human patients have been drilled into and probed without any pain whatsoever.

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[orthogonal]

Time and again, a sizable portion of Slashdot posters seems to stick up for animal research, no matter how cruel and no matter how pointless.

I'm just happy my angioplasty was "cruelly and pointlessly" tested on dogs before it was tried on me.

But I suppose you forego most drugs and medical procedures so as not to benefit from animal testing.

Re:Creepy? Or Just Pointless?

[bytesmythe]

ignoring the fact that so much of what's done is useless fluff, much like these remote controlled rats.

While you also ignore a few facts of your own...

1. Animal experiments are very expensive. If there is really a way to do an experiment without animals, it will be done. With animals, you have to keep them comfortable, fed, watered, and pay staff to care for them.
2. All animal experiments have to have special approval. You cannot proceed without it.
3. There are very tight regulations related to the treatment of animals in experiments. Pretty much any procedure more invasive than a simple injection requires anesthesia.
4. No one does these experiments to be cruel or evil. Experiments are done with the intention of learning something important. This is not the laboratory equivalent of a 7 year-old pulling the wings off flies.

Neurological experiments absolutely cannot be performed on anything other than a living biological organism. The idea here isn't just to create remote controlled rats, but to discover how we can advance new technologies related to the brain. Modern probes that can monitor the firing patterns of 4 individual neurons simultaneously? The idea that we can now partially enable the blind to see? Do you think that the experiments required to pull this off were performed on neurons in a petri dish? Of course not, and it wouldn't even be possible. Perhaps one day in the future if, heaven forbid!, you are ever tragically paralyzed in an accident, you will perhaps thank the researchers who come up with remote control technology. I know if it were to happen to me, I'd be very glad to have a way to communicate with my family, or take care of myself instead of being a complete burden.

Especially since there's no critical look at whether full-fledged robots could be developed to perform these functions.

Many researchers devote their time to developing small-scale robotics, but nothing is close to being anywhere near as agile as a biological organism. But again, the research isn't just about controlling rats; it's also a way to figure out how to interface with the brain. Given the paralysis scenario, what good would a robotic "supplemental" body be if you couldn't control the damn thing? When that kind of technology comes about for general use, you'll have researchers, rats, and monkeys to thank for it.

The sad thing is that I'm probably going to be modded down for raising these concerns.

Well, I've got one point left, but I chose to reply instead. Besides, I don't mod down. ;)