From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Sep 10 1999 - 01:01:40 MDT
On Fri, 10 Sep 1999 CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>
> Well, yes, but developmental genes are off in adults. The developmental
> tweaks we're getting good at are ineffective in adults and unsafe for
> children.
But are there any barriers to *enabling* them? I believe that there
was a recent announcement that scientists had discovered a collection
of 3-4 genes that in *adult* mice allowed wound healing to take on
the characteristics of "normal development" rather than "scar tissue".
If it doesn't involve dozens of genes, we already have the tools
(though they are somewhat unrefined) to turn them on or off.
I would never promote doing anything in children, except perhaps
the correction of a legitimate "defect". But in adults, if I say
I want a third arm, what right does the medical community or
the government, have to deny me that, *EVEN* if the success rate
is only 10%.
>
> For spare parts we need in vitro organs plus reactivation of neural
> development.
Would you perhaps qualify *what* organs need neural development and
why? Heart, I might accept, liver or kidney I would be more skeptical
about.
> We still can't do that in any system, never mind routinely.
> We can grow things like ears but a hand is well over a decade off.
I suspect we will be able to "grow" them, however the really
difficult part will be connecting communication lines (nerves)
in functional ways. That is likely to remain difficult. However,
the insertion of a neural-net mapping chip that is both "programmable"
and has a much higher training rate than normal neurons seems a reasonable
solution to this problem. So if we can grow them (in less than a
decade), I think technologies from foreign disciplines will solve
the functional augmentation difficulties.
Robert
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