Human Components in Devices There is a revolution going on. This revolution is employing procedures which evoke bad feelings in some of us while others may see it as a tremendous advancement. If you are wondering what I am talking about, it is the use of human cells, neurons and other body parts outside of the human body. The revolution has been going on mostly in a quiet manner where the media avoids major stories about what is happening and if it wasn’t for sources on the Internet, we might never know. In all fairness however, I do have to say while it seldom happens, a story does come out once in a while in the media. One story I read in the media had to do with using pigs to grow human organs. It seems pigs are close to humans in some ways, close enough to test this idea. Growing human cells inside of pigs was not an easy feat. One would think it would only involve scientists who are connected to the field of genetics and other sciences to do with human organs, but if that is what we thought, we would be wrong. It also involves veterinarians who have a good knowledge of pigs. After all these pigs are part of the study and have to be well taken care of because someday, they may be very important to people surviving. I’m sure the animal rights supporters don’t like the idea of pigs being used this way and I am not crazy about it, but if it means saving human lives and there is no other way to grow these organs then I guess I’m for the idea. An Australian company which is a recent startup is designing computer chips which are much different than the ones we have now. They have decided the way to improve these chips is to use neurons which they can acquire from humans and mice. When I first heard about this, I couldn’t help but laugh, because in my mind it sounded like human neurons were no more valuable than mouse neurons. What the company is trying to do is reduce the amount of power it takes to run the chips used for artificial intelligence. The company has said they wanted to find chips that will eventually have the power of the human brain. The way the company gathers human neurons is by gathering human skin cells and turning them back into stem cells and then to neurons. I already mentioned in the past how scientists are growing mini human brains and how I was totally against this since I felt the brains have a possibility of becoming sentient and yet scientists promised this would never happen. It wasn’t long before they started to suspect it had a chance of happening which disturbed them. The purpose of growing the small brains was for experimentation and possible use in some devices. It doesn’t seem the experimentation on these brains has stopped, which is a shame. The latest thing I have read indicates that some mini brains have achieved neural activity similar to preterm humans. Can you imagine a brain without any sensory input being tortured in our lab, it just seems wrong to me? There is a prediction being made which states in the future we will be able to use machines to modify our brains and our DNA. The brain used to be thought of as sacrosanct and aside from the simple repairs to the skull and such there wasn’t much we could do surgically. We have come a long way since those days, but we still have a long way to go. When we started putting implants in living human brains, we started something which will only get more complex as time goes by. One scientist thinks of this as evolution and he predicts it will make us quite different in the future from what we are today. We really don’t know the power the brain has which has been untapped but we may find out in the near future. Over seven years ago it was stated a biological transistor would be possible. A regular transistor regulates the flow of electrons in a circuit, a biological transistor regulates the flow of enzymes. New types of transistors called transcriptors, have been suggested. It is said they would improve genetic logic and allow for better logical operations such as “if this than that.” This would mean computers would have a human biological component. It is not clear yet whether DNA from other creatures would be as efficient. You really have to wonder what devices in the future will have some human element to them. We are certainly finding out biological elements work better in many cases than anything we can produce in the laboratory. I am not just talking about human body parts or even mammals, but the whole spectrum of life on this planet. Look how efficient plants are at turning sunlight into energy. As a matter of fact, there is so much energy being wasted on this planet we probably could be powering everything just tapping into it. Everywhere you look there is energy, there are the ocean currents, waves, wind, temperature, sunlight and so many other things. As we look at mother nature many of us can’t help but feel what was created on this planet in the form of life is a miracle. There are a lot of things we could just copy if we became proficient enough. One of the big questions that comes to my mind is will it be possible for an artificial brain, perhaps using some human neurons, to be used is some sort of an android body? Will there come a time when we will think of an android as a human, because it will be a perfect imitation of one? Even further down the road, will some scientist take these human micro-brains which have been grown in the lab and allow them to grow into a full human brain which could then be put into an artificial body? Personally, I would have to think by the time a brain grows into full term it will have become so mentally ill because of its lack of stimulus and contact with others it will become dangerous and would not make the basis for an artificial human. Will the future be full of devices which have human components? Right now, we seem to be starting down that road, but whether it will continue we have no way of knowing at this time.
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