Read more: Animal Testing Could Be Replaced With Farms Of Artificial Humans: Should We Be Alarmed? (Inquisitr, 1. Sept. 2014)
Life Sciences Animal Testing Could Be Replaced With Farms Of Artificial Humans
- Thread starter Second Summer
- Start date
yakherder
老外
"The idea may sound like something straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel, but the reality is that human lungs, livers and other organs have already been replicated on smartphone-sized microchips to test the human’s body reaction to new drugs."
Shouldn't that read human body's reaction?
*runs away*
Shouldn't that read human body's reaction?
*runs away*
OP
OP
So the approach in the article is to use chips to emulate human organs, i.e. "in silico". While that sounds like a good start, I know that critics say it can't entirely replace animal experiments. So the logical next step would be to grow human organs and body parts, and then put those together into a single system to approximate a real human. Surely, that would be even better than an animal model, right?
yakherder
老外
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that, initially at least, the problem isn't going to be whether or not artificially grown organs are suitable for experimentation, but the fact that new technology is often expensive. All you need for animal experiments are a cage, two rats of the opposite sex, and a customer that doesn't give a ****. Considering that the end goal of most commercial testing is to create a product that brings profit, and that most testing for vaccinations relies on the approval of tax payers, it's gonna be a long time before it's cost effective to make the change.
In the near future, at best, they'll test on animals first, then once they have something that works, run it through the artificial human test, which will be more costly than animals but less costly than live humans.
In the near future, at best, they'll test on animals first, then once they have something that works, run it through the artificial human test, which will be more costly than animals but less costly than live humans.
OP
OP
Yes, I'm sure the cost will be a huge factor. In that respect I think the human-on-a-chip approach will actually quickly become the cheaper alternative. We're only just starting to grow organs in the lab, so it will take some time and effort before that approach becomes cost effective enough. Maybe it will never be cheaper than testing on rodents, but it has the potential, I would think, to be a much more accurate model, so might be preferred for that reason despite the higher cost.
Blobbenstein
.......
are we?
Can you really grow a single organ without growing the whole animal?
I know they are trying to make organs, but that's not the same as growing a real one.
ledboots
Peace
They've grown vaginas and noses in the lab, no livers or hearts yet. The Science Of Lab-Grown Organs: Vaginas, Noses Now Possible - Forbes
Blobbenstein
.......
yes, but they are not really growing the organs, they are using tissue and growing on it scaffolds, or shaping it.
Actually, I think the results from using human tissue would be much more reliable overall than using animals. Okay, maybe the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and I don't see how you would be able to test for psychological or complex neurological effects since you wouldn't have a brain there. But animals supposedly have brains so much simpler than a human's, so it wouldn't make sense to test for those effects in animals anyway. (Don't get me started on those assinine experiments studying alcoholism or learned helplessness which use animals as experimental subjects.)
