Slashdot Mirror
Implants Allow the Blind to See
gihan_ripper writes "Neurosurgeon Kenneth Smith has performed a revolutionary operation on St Louis resident Cheri Robertson, connecting a camera directly to her optic nerve. The rig is in principle similar to Geordi La Forge's visor, albeit in very rudimentary form. At present, the 'image' consists of a number of white dots, as on an LED display. There are also governmental restrictions on this research, forcing Kenneth and his team to fly to Portugal to carry out the operation. If this technology takes off, the future will be bright for the sight-impaired."
Can I get the infrared/untraviolet model?
A blog about stuff.
One man ironically replied "Implants, breast implants."
Resistance is futile...
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Now if only it could be modded to see through clothes...
This is not new. This has been done for almost a decade. Unless the resolution is sigificantly greater than it used to be (about a 15x15 black and white grid), then this is not news.
Camera tech is pretty well-known. Adding IR, UV, magnification, auto-adjusting for sunlight/night vision is all fairly trivial once you have the optic connection.
Imagine switching to sepia tone whenever you want that "wild west" feel.
The hard part, of course, is the resolution. Stimulating specific optic nerves is tricky, but fortunately your brain is good at dealing with odd input even if you don't get the connection quite right. It reminds me of the experiment where someone wore mirror glasses that flipped the world upside-down. After a week or so, everything seemed normal.
Maybe us geeks won't all go blind, well at least the ones of us that could afford this in our old age.
Integration between electronics and the brain? Impressive.
Too bad good ol' W. and his buddies are against medical/scientific progress.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Why are there restrictions on research such as this? What kind of restrictions and how did they come about?
Last I heard -- several years ago -- they had enough resolution to see a a black/white machine just about comperable to a single ASCII character rendered on a 1985 era CRT. That would mean an "image" would have about as much clarity as, say, one of the falling mushrooms from an original Centipeded game. Not exactly high res, but a positive step.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If they're not already, DARPA will be all over this like stink on a monkey. They'd love to have soldiers will what will amount to wallhacks.
On an unrelated note, if they could make it so that they didn't need to cut open my head to do it, I'd love to have infrared/ultraviolet/telescopic/ultrasonic vision.
Article states that electrodes are implated into the back of the brain. If it really were the optic nerve it would be more significant, less danger = wider adoption.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Back in university, I seem to recall one of the profs mentioning that a hex pattern like a honeycomb tended to work better for image recognition than square pixels. It changes the topology possible for doing edge detection. If you use a pointillism filter on the hex pattern, you can get a pretty good "hash" of an image. The trick is to focus more on contrast than on color -- check the ratio of rods and cones in the human eye.
How ironic, I just so happen to find this site today! Why go for this when Lasik is an easy to do at home project? Check it out here. I guess after you sear your eyeball as in step 3, you can replace it with one of those cameras.
Of course that all depends on whether or not the blindness we get from wanking is caused by degraded eyes or degraded brains...
Without reading the article, I will guess that this sort of advancement will benefit those who have lost their sight but not those who never had it.
Play Command HQ online
Another strategy was just invented: if you lost your photoreceptors, just make the other neurons in the retina or brain sensitive to light. A group just managed this today, for the first time, in mice. Blind mice, who had been treated with viruses that cause the targeted cells to express light-activated channels, were able to regain transmission of information about the external world to cortex. This was recently reported in a blog, and in other media.
So sad that massive bureaucracy and misinformation makes this kind of research too difficult and expensive.
Demented But Determined.
I must admit, I find it very difficult to trust any "journalism" with that many exclamation marks: "With the help of a device, she could see again!" This is written a lot like a press release, not a news article. Has this not been published in any major scientific journals?
Limina.Log
I didn't quite understand from the article why this procedure was prevented in the US, aside from cost. Could anyone shed some light on the matter?
she doesn't have to wear that stupid hairband over her eyes anymore.
Geordi will be so happy when he learns about this!
Pretty cool nonetheless.
The actual article reads:
> WHO IS IT FOR? In order for the procedure and the device to work,
> patients must have once had vision. They also must have lost both eyeballs or optic nerves.
The electrodes are connected to the brain directly, not to the optic nerves.
In addition, this procedure has been done before (the article says Cheri is 16th person to get this surgery).
I recall seeing something like this late last year, but it was slightly different. In principle the same thing - electrodes connected into the optic nerve - but in this case it was a set of 16 electrodes in a 4x4 array. Essentially they had the guy equipped with the tech put a pair of glasses on that had a camera in the center. Each frame was broken down into the aforementioned 4x4 grid, and then delivered directly into the optic nerve. 4x4 is not exactly high resolution though, so the guy was only really able to distinguish light areas from dark.
There was further research planned though. The next goal was to create a 64-electrode version (8x8), which should give the ability to distinguish large features in the image being viewed, such as being able to distinguish the approximate figure of someone standing just infront of you. Their eventual goal was to be able to also build essentially glass eyes which would have a camera mounted within and would remove the need to pass the electrodes through the skull and out underneath the skin to the area of the temple where the signal from the camera was delivered.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this is more results from the same research, or another group working along similar lines. I unfortunately don't have a link to the older material and TFA is a bit sparse on details.
</pedant>
Still pretty funny though.
On the plus side, she could probably watch a solar eclipse without special glasses. That would be awesome.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Can I replace my monitor with a direct optical link?
With a nice machine crunching video into edges, I guess even a 32x32 image could be useful to show the edges of sidewalks, obstructions etc. All sounds well within the scope of a PDA-level CPU.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Audio is similar to an FFT pattern matching filter. There is a reason tube amps "sound" better even though their statistics are worse. Even vs. odd harmonics. A tube preamp cleans up the digital hash and makes the angels sing when playing female vocals.
Women have much more sensitive hearing, statistically.
After the FFT has done coarse categorization, you have the building blocks to begin looking for patterns. It's important to filter out the highest and lowest frequencies as they distract from the actual human vocal range.
Neurons detect and fire semi-stochastically with a little bit of randomness (Schroedinger's cat). They connect in three dimensions, not two.
Sony, interested, said they are developing DRM technologies for this device.
From a goals perspective, there are major leaps forward:
* ability to avoid obstacles
* ability to see individual people
* ability to differentiate between people
* ability to discern expressions
* ability to read enlarged print
* ability to operate visually oriented equipment
* ability to read normally
* ability to drive
Taking things one step at a time, its a long road but hopefully one that is linear rather than logarythmically difficult.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
When I was a little girl, the only thing eggplants were good for was eating. But then disgraceful women started using them to make their chests bigger. It's an outrage I tell you, an outrage! Do you know how many starving children an eggplant can feed? And now we find out that those same eggplants could be used to help the blind. Someday eggplants will be able to cure cancer, but there won't be any left because Pamela Anderson used them all up.
I saw a program on PBS a while ago on this guy and his operation(was kinda a disappointment for one of the patients). Hope the new results are better.
It's important to note that due to the way the human brain develops synaptic connections in the visual cortex, only humans who had sight from birth to some age beyond 3 to 5 years of age will benefit a great deal from such a procedure. While people who are blind from birth due to cataracts or other conditions obtain some visual perception when the cataract is later removed, most never develop the neural connections that allow them to identify what they're seeing. Everything from navigating around desks in a well-lit classroom to differentiating a face from a table, a television, a light bulb, or an automobile is all but impossible if the visual cortex doesn't develop properly in response to normal visual stimulus from birth. Sight is useless without the ability to percieve what one is really seeing. So while this is incredibly impressive and promising for people who had sight but lost it, don't expect that this will be a cure-all to allow people with all types of blindness to see again.
This is the start of something wonderful. The Auditory nerves have already been hacked, and we are well down the path towards providing 1,024 channels of sound to persons who have lost their hearing due to ear damage, or malformed ear hardware.
Hacking the Optic Nerve is the Next Big Thing because humans get 90% of all sensory input via the optic nerve. Once you've cracked that you're 90% of the way towards very, very advanced cyborgs, with the 'net being ubiquitously available, and displaying as a HUD-type device over our normal vision, or as a 6 foot screen when the eyes are closed.
Simultaneous to these developments, we are already taking steps towards being able to offer ages people perfect memories again, by the introduction of the artificial hippocampus. (To my knowledge there are no people, as yet, with this device, but it works in Rats)
Having the ability to crack the "memory code" of our brains with a better hippocampus, and allowing our brains to use external storage ("wet-wiring"?), coupled with optic and auditory nerve implants is going to allow humans to improve themselves mentally beyond the limits which evolution, chemistry and brain size have created.
I can't wait for my implants!
I hope they won't run windows Brain-Edition though.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Sounds like the ultimate peripheral for Duke Nukem Forever.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I'd like to know what the heck kind of laws we have that make this type of operation illegal to do in the US...
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
As I read my computer screen right now, if I try to notice how my eyes move, I think I can really only read the word that my eyes are directly pointed at. I don't know if this phenomenon is a function of how the eye works or how the brain's visual center works or a combination of the two.
So, my question is, if someone sees using a camera mounted on their glasses (or whatever) will they have to move their entire head for every tiny little adjustment in what they want to look at?? will they have the ability to see with equal clarity a whole field of things at once??
If the first I think that would be a serious problem (not that they won't be happy to be able to see...). If it's the second then that could have some very cool advantages. For instance, if it works for one camera, how about 4 (one in each direction)?
very very old news. From the 1990's even.
Did anyone else read that as breast implants that let the blind see? Until i stopped and comprehended for a second I had some interesting visions flashing through my mind. Get bigger boobs and replace those nipples with transplanted eyeballs! Sounds like a character off some cheap Star Trek knock-off.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
TFA paints a very different picture:
:-/
He says, right now, governmental restrictions may get in the way of performing the surgery in the United States. "There were no governmental or hospital problems with getting permission to do the experimental operation in Portugal, whereas, it would be almost impossible here. Plus, it was much cheaper -- about one-third of the cost in the hospital as it would be in U.S. hospitals," he says
Nowhere does it say anything about government restrictions on the research
Sensationalisation (wow, that's a longer word than I thought) anyone?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Did anyone else think breast implants when reading the headline? I figure they could be seeing in brail with such implants....
Restistance is futile!
:-(
It's all starting to come together.
Common sense is not so common
I find it troubling that more and more developments have to be taken out of America simply to make it happen, just like stem-cell research. I'm wonder if the people behind the loud, irritating moral voice against this type of research will have any qualms using the advances/benefits when they need them?
...we'll all have cameras for eyes and direct connections to the internet from our brains like in Ghost in the Shell. But it are the benefits really worth becoming a "ghost in a shell"? After all just wait until you get hacked are infected by the parallel Individual 11 virus.
This should fascinating. Imagine: Anywhere that has a "no camera" policy will have to make an exception for blind people. Add in infrared, recording, and wireless transmitting and suddenly this has the potential to be very disruptive.
Companies worried about espionage? Stores worried about security? Government offices? Suddenly they can't stop people from taking video, and it will be difficult to stop them from posting it for the world to see.
As the article summary cleverly concludes, "the future will be bright for the sight-impaired."
Heh heh.
In other words, ummm,
"The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades" ?
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/lyrics/the_
I bother to fuck because it is enjoyable, not just because it is a biological imperative. I assume your "why fucking bother" is an oblique and cunning allusion to evolutionary processes, rather than the frustrated ravings of a complete idiot and an utter fool.
In answer to your question though:
1) Natural Selection has already run its course, that's why.
2) Because humans have an inate desire to improve themselves by any means possible, that's why.
Evolution has used many tools over the last 14 or so billion years to advance itself. It used gravity to collapse gas clouds into suns, and supernova feces, similarly, into planets, then it used other laws of physics and chemistry to create planets like Earth. Survival of the fittest was evolution's tool during the emergence of creatures on Earth, and to create homo sapiens sapiens.
Natural Selection is much reduced now - and so is survival of the fittest to a large degree. (Although those genuinely unable to survive are auto-aborted early in a pregnancy - an effect of survival of the fittest.)
From natural selection and survival of the fittest, evolution is now turning its attention to Un-natural selection (or "technoselection" if you will), whereby humans are improved via the use of technology. Ultimately, this may lead to several different species of humans, and a far wider definition of "human".
Ultimately of course, biology is a dead-end for evolution, and it seems likely to me that humans as we are now, are pretty much as far as biology can go. (It doesn't seem credible to think that bio-engineering could add infra-red ability to the human eye, add 100 petabytes of fault-free storage to the brain, create bones which will knit in an hour, harden bone until it's like metal, allow RF signals to be intercepted by the brain, or allow back-ups to be created should the worst occur.)
The limits of biology are well known, and it's obvious to me, that unless we find a way to move humanity from biology into hardware, that evolution will leave humanity behind, and we'll be destined to the fate suffered by other evolutionary dead ends.
If we don't pick up the mantle, I believe our self-aware creations will, and either way, this will lead to the pace of evolution kicking up yet another notch.
Each stage of evolution, and each paradigm of evolution has taken roughly half as long to achieve its goals as the preceding paradigm. The paradigm of technology removes almost all constraints from the rate of change in technology, and hence evolution can increase its pace at a rate more suited to the paradigm.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
I know its just (science) fiction, but it is a rather good book, about a woman who was blind since birth attempting to see via a device and going quite insane.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
If you'd read the article you'd know that this device is only for people who were born with sight. Natural selection is about rewarding 'good' genetic make-up, losing your sight in a car accident and then being left to die is not natural selection. Even if your suggestion was remotely viable, it wouldn't increase the overall health of the gene pool.
I saw something like this on the discovery channel or tech tv or something, like a year ago. It had a blind guy walking through a park and driving (very slowly).
Ya, but does the computer they use for this run Linux?
Try http://www.hometech.com/techwire/ht-rg6qb.jpg
Put your "eyes" on your shoes, and walk close to some skirtage.
Table-ized A.I.
"the future will be bright for the sight-impaired."
Until then, can we say "move along nothing to see here"? (no pun intended)
You just got troll'd!
I love the "don't blink" warning.
Of course, that's not really much of a concern since it comes with the No-Blink(TM) brand Eye Drops! (see "How it Works" section)
I'm sure if you peel back the label you see the words "superglue"...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a pretty lengthy story from '02 about a Canadian guy who has had a similar procedure.
t ml?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
It's about the work of William Dobelle who is mentioned in
the FA as a pioneer in the field who recently passed away.
Really interesting stuff.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.09/vision.h
I just inject obscene amounts of melange into my system.
Right now such things are pretty rudimentary, requiring external power and an external device. In the end, as microtechnology and knowledge of the human body progresses, one would hope that such technology could be more of a "drop in" replacement (that is to say, perhaps they could put it right in the eye socket and then allow for normal eye movement, etc).
In addition, rather than relying on external power sources, perhaps in the future it can use something like a dracucell to power it, which would probably remove a certain portition of weight/size currently used for batteries.
I honestly can't tell which... it's brilliant, though, either way. What's next, the home cataract removal kit? "Gutcrafters: Kidney transplants in about an hour"?
Uh, no. "Image sensors", like eyes, don't produce a signal that is fundamentally different from the signals produced by any other sensory organ. What matters is where in the location in the brain to which those signals are directed. Although I'm not certain, I'd guess that this is why the technique won't work on those who were never able to see - they never developed the necessary neural connections in the brain for vision.
I'm dusting off old neurons for this, but somewhere around 1980, Popular Electronics had a short article on something like this. A small camera was connected to a grid on the blind p[erson's back. I want to say that the resolution was 128x128, but that may just be because this would be the grid of a 16k dynamic ram at that time. Someone who was in the experiment claimed that he got about the resolution of a small, fuzzy black and white television (but how could he make that comparison).
hawk
You might find this interesting as well.
. html
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,59634,00
Silicone Implants Cause the Male to Go Blind
First post on slashdot... You all are getting way too excited. The technology and knowledge of the brain to do what you all see as the end result the blind (who were not born blind) being able to see, even in a relatively rudimentary way, is years upon years upon years off. My guess would be 20-50 years at the LEAST. /Sensory Motor Neuroscience.
In Soviet Russia, they take your optic nerve and connect it to a camera.
It took me a while to figure out it wasn't breast implants allowing people to see. Although they do make seeing a whole lot more worthwhile.
Ha...Ha!!
Let me guess, three of them?
In a Wired article circa 2000, a patient with a set of electrodes on his visual cortex accomplished two of those goals. The scary part is that he skipped directly from obstacle avoidance to taking the viper out for a spin in the parking lot.
Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
Seems there are pros and cons to all approaches, and maybe a hybrid will evolve at some point,
e.g. to compensate for the low resolution and narrow field of view of contemporary implants?
Camera phones are designed to be highly portable and nowadays have enough processing power for dealing with low-res snapshots. You could even make phone calls! So perhaps something along the lines of http://www.seeingwithsound.com/midlet.htm where a regular camera phone is used to give blind users auditory feedback on shapes, colors, edges, etcetera.
I'll bet Pamela Anderson has night vision, IR, UV, and much, much more.
Er, Pamela, I'm um, sorry if you saw that time that I thought um... Or, those other times.
I'll just go now.
Why fucking bother
why not let natural selection take its course instead?
On the up side, we've found an AC who's not a creationist/ID proponent
And isn't it fun that someone trolling a story about sight can't see the difference between zero (G0) and a capital 'o' (MOD)...
--darren
Can you imagine the feelings of a person who suddently gets to see....?
The question I would like to such a person is, now that you can see, how would you define black in regards to your previous state ? Did you see black ? Or did you see nothing and you simply cannot describe it ?
But doesn't that only work when the visually orientated part of the brain is damaged but the eyes are still functional?
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
What's with the picture in tfa? For $120,000 I'd expect something a little more aesthetic than the insides of a $10 webcam superglued to a pair of sunglasses innit?
Huh? I'm sorry, I seemed to have missed a memo somewhere?
Natural selection has stopped? Evolution is done? Uh.... I think not.
I suppose you could make a point that due to our fixing various health problems with gadgetry and surgery, we're getting more and more bad genes into the gene pool, and hence frelling over our future as a species. Ok, so we've defeated natural selection... but not evolution. and certaintly not for the whole planet.
Your entire post seems to be biased that evolution reached its peak at Mankind... I also think not. Other creatures on this planet are doing just fine thank you.
Your entire post seems to also grant some anthromoporphic(sp) personification to evolution. Uh... evolution doesn't TRY for anything. It has no goals. There is no strange little spirit that says "I think that fish needs a fin". Mutations happen. breeding happens. I also didn't realize evolution was in charge of gravity, physics, or chemistry....
You very much need to read up on the evolutionary process. I would recommend "The Selfish Gene", a fascinating book that is just a blast to read.
I'm a student at UCLA working on a similar project called Retinal Prosthetic writing code in Visual C++ and Intel's OpenCV library. Check out their site:
n dex.htm
http://www.judylab.org/research/projects/George/i
We're running a simulation of what the surgeon is doing by having the subject wear goggles with a s-video input (it's those fancy expensive goggles to watch movies or to game on). Similar to the article, a camera is attached to the front of the goggles. The input feeds into the computer, chugs through my code, and displays an image meant to simulate varying amounts of electrodes (4x4, 16x16, 64x64) in various configurations (wide screen vision anyone?). All this goes on while the subject tries to accomplish tasks (writing a check, discerning between a fork and knife, etc).
Also, check out a company working on implementing this idea:
http://www.2-sight.com/
Does the computer run Linux ?
Joking aside, I find this very interesting. I have a hereditory, degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa ) which I was diagnosed with when I was very young. Being hereditory my Mum, Nan and Uncle all have this condition as well, and I have also found older relatives on cencuses who are marked down as 'blind', probably indicating that they also had the condition.
The condition worsens with age, so at the moment I am not too bad. I don't have any night vision and so I struggle in dark rooms or out at night time, but during the day I am OK. As people with RP get older, especially into 40s, 50s and beyond blind spots can develop, as well as tunnel vision or even total loss of vision.
I was surpised recently to find out that our car park attendant Dave here at work also has the condition since it is very rare (I think approximately 10,000 people of 56 million in the UK have it). Dave is in his 50s and in the last six months his vision has deteriorated rapidly such that he was registered partially sighted and the actually registered blind. He now has to walk with a white stick and has been retired from work, which is a lot to come to terms with in the space of a year or so. Sadly it took him more by surprise because it had skipped a generation in his genes and so neither of his parents had it and could explain it to him.
I am only 24, it gives me hope to think that in the next 25 years or so this research may develop to the point where it is commonplace, and that if I did lose my sight I would simply be able to book an appointment to get my visor fitted and that would be the end of it!
Ian.
In other news, the US congress just passed a law that would make it mandatory to fit these camera devices with a new DRM technology that blocks unlicensed contents. You will only see what the *AA (or the government) wants you to see...
The device stimulates the brain directly, not the optic nerve. Stories like this have been kicked around the block for quite awhile.
Actually, it probably isn't quite the same as what these guys are on about: http://www.cochlearwar.com/introduction.html, but what will happen to human diversity as tech makes it possible to amend all deviations from the norm?
I could not find it in the article. Is there a better source?
I am asking this because I have read a similar story some time ago, where the resolution was "a dozen or couple of dozens pixels" in one dimension.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!!
This story is at least three years old. William H. Dobelle, Ph.D, the inventor of the device and the surgical implantation technique, died in October, 2004. See this article (CHIPS, OTHER SMALL DEVICES HELP PATIENTS BATTLE EYE DISEASES), published in 2003.
...and connected it to an ipod? This could be the mother of all visualisations :)
Solar Eclipse as viewed by "robo-chick":
O~
"Ooooh! Aaaaaah!"
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
I remember a year ago the PBS show Nova ran a piece on this very same doctor, and the patient that recieved the implants was very unhappy. This is becuase the implant it self is laid ontop of the optic nerve and trys to stimulate it with electrical pulses. The problem with this that most of the electrodes do no stimulate the nerve because of poor contact, also the electrodes need to run at different voltages for different people, so a patient may not be able even use the system, becuase depending on the success of the surgery, and the patients body they may require a high voltage, which has cause many sesures in many of his patients. There is a reason that this type of technology is banned in the USA, it is just unsafe. we're better of looking into actually implanting microchips into the optic nerve, it will have a better connection, because it won't be laying ontop of the brain, it would now be part of the brain. Anyway stem cell research will probably have a solution, long be for this technology is ever viable.
There were earlier experiments with converting a visual array to pressure sensors on the skin of one's back. After a few weeks the user forgot it was coming through the skin and subsconsciously thought they were seeing. The brain is remarkably plastic. Other similar experiments include upside-down googles. People learing braille and morse-code stop seeing the dots and dashes after a while and see just words.
Complaining is futile...
as opposed to
"Implants Allow the Seeing to Become Blind"
I
Oh yes, everything will be much better with stem cells.
Except for the babies.
What babies? Well, in case you haven't been keeping up, there are a couple of issues with stem cells and rejection. It pretty much requires a complete genetic match to the recepient. Now, that isn't all that hard to do with some basic cloning, but it does involve cloning human tissue. This pretty much requires an egg cell for each clone as well, so there needs to be some "egg donor" for this.
Because of the genetic match requirement, cloning stem cells isn't all that useful - you need ones that genetically match the recipient. This means the whole process with an egg donor, human cloning, etc. is required for each treatment.
There is another way that removes the specter of human cloning is simply the one baby, one cure technique. Using currently available IVF procedures it isn't that hard to get an embryo with the correct genetic makeup. Of course, there might be some other ethical considerations to this sort of thing.
The long and the short of it is that it will always be massively expensive, use currently banned or strongly disapproved methods and open doors for selling human egg cells, creating human clones, and a bunch of other stuff. It will be a treatment for the uber-rich who can afford to flaunt any existing laws, customs and so on.
One baby, one cure. Just keep that in mind. Yeah, stem cells are going to be the answer for health care in the future.
</rant>
once major medical corporations get involved and find a way to inflict pop-up ads and maybe a crawl on the screen.
Free Beer!
"Or the subject" my hairy back. Learn to parse, ".pl"!
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I find the fact that this old news story is garnering so much feedback quite interesting. Perhaps more accurately, the nature of the feedback is interesting. I guess news is always news no matter how old it is if the person hearing it is doing so for the first time and does not care to corroborate. One would think that News Carolina, when posting it, might have noted the part where it says, "The surgery is not yet performed in the United States, but Dr. Smith said he hopes it will be in the next five years," and then noted that it is now 4 years later. Perhaps a follow-up interview would be in order and of much interest. This shoddy journalism is so rampant and people have so much trust in journalists and reporting that hardly anyone searched this story online to figure this out. That is very telling. Gobble up what is fed and ask no questions. Make a Republican proud!1 4075213.htm
Oh, if you are interested in reading an article written closer to the time this event occurred, here is a story from 2002:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/06/0206
mod parent scary
Well there goes another Chris Rock joke.
Your post is exactly what I really enjoy about
Thank you.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I dont mean to be a jerk, however anyone notice this was posted on April Fools? Wouldn't it be on every news station around the country?
Blog
Short post... sorry.
/. right now if things had gone slightly differently on earth: evolution doesn't care - and humans are the luckiest creatures ever: we have won the lottery of life, and are conveniently at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
No, I understand evolutionary theory pretty well.
What I am saying is that for humans, evolution is just about done with us. This because humans are the ultimate expression of Biology (disclaimer: SO FAR!) and it seems unlikely that evolutionary processes can advance the human species much beyond where we are right now.
For sure, we may lose a little toe, or become less hairy, or evolve skin which is less prone to carcinomas... but this is little more than window dressing.
True, evolution does not have a "purpose" except in so far as evolution has always led to increased complexity. When I say "evolution used gravity" - what I mean is that evolution applies not just to biological systems, but to the entire universe, and evolution has "used" different tools as part of the ongoing process of evolution. Gravity has been used, Fusion explosions inside supernovae have been "used", and "survival of the fittest" has been used.
Each paradigm on the evolutionary ladder, gets evolution to the next rung. Evolution doesn't stop at each rung, and rungs of the past don't stop evolving - but evolution's natural course is for increasing complexity. My argument is that humans are about as complex as Biology can make us - and there are already a ton of evolutionary compromises within our body. Some of these are women who can barely run due to the size of the birth canal, and a VERY long childhood - which allows our brains to grow to their maximum size.
In that humans are at the cusp of creating new entities using technology, it's logical to assume that the torch of evolution is about to be passed to the next paradigm of increasing complexity: hardware.
Because hardware can be modified at will, and in increasingly shorter time spans (Google : "The Singularity" where the rate of change of technology becomes impossibel for a human to keep up with), the "generations" required for previous evolutionary improvements drop to time frames where the rate of change rapidly becomes too fast for (unassisted) humans to follow.
The "childhood" of an AI is going to be measured in seconds and minutes, rather than years - and the next generation of hardware will come 24 months later.
Once humans are removed from the entire process (which is a surety if humans survive to the 22nd century) then evolution will have "done with us".
Evolution has performed some amazing experiments: when it got its "hands" on DNA, it promptly experimented with the limits of the new paradigm: (See Diplodocus, and other sauropods) until it settled on the best form for our environment: humans.
This isn't to say that super intelligent theropods could not be reading
Or so we think...
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"