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Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

europeanscientist.com

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Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#41

Post by lewispollard »

echelon wrote: post #38
amankl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot here, but this takes the cake. I'm not sure if that post is a troll, assuming it is not: Half of the energy and time of any decent person with morals goes into stopping smart psychopaths like that poster from doing whatever the heck they want. I'm not religious, but it makes me wonder if the church is actually needed to keep those people in check.

> I'm not sure if that post is a troll It's not. I've had this idea for some time, and I'm absolutely serious. We already grow human cells in culture. It's like growing an extremely delicate plant. The HeLa cell line is derived from Henrietta Lacks, and she's been dead for some time. There's nothing wrong with growing and manipulating cells like this. Eukaryotic cells are as brainless as prokaryotic ones. This is how…

> Personhood requires a brain. Period.

Well, it requires a complex nervous system.

How many neurons are there outside of the brain?

How many neurons create a sensing, feeling being?

It's an assumption to say that the only way for consciousness around organic feeling to exist is through a brain. We don't know that.

Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#42

Post by Pudini »

mattigames wrote: post #36
ngla wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Shapiro says, you need to be taken seriously where it matters. If you sincerely need to ask which morals this violates, you show that you have no classical humanistic education. Such an education cannot be provided in a web forum. It is sad that because of a couple of psychopaths tech people are not taken seriously outside of web forums.

Is easy to claim the moral high ground when you don't define it, meaning where are you drawing the line? If I lose a leg in an accident and some scientists (plus doctors) can make a clone of my leg and my leg only to reattach it on my body is that moral or amoral? If yes then what about the complete lower body? If yes what about everything below the neck?

I think you are being silly.

What's moral or amoral is dependant on whatever he is feeling at the moment. I very much doubt he has defined it.

Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#43

Post by echelon »

alevskaya wrote: post #39
echelon wrote: post #21

We need to clone decephalized humans and livestock. With thousands of brainless bodies kept alive on life support, you have test subjects for a limitless number of experiments that would have never been possible before. You also create a never-ending O negative blood supply and organ harvesting program. It the case of decephalized animals, you also get cruelty free meat. And that's how you bootstrap the program and p…

I worked as a genetic engineer in human cell therapy: developmental biology doesn't really work that way. You can't just "decephalize" without causing massive secondary effects in body development and maturation - the nervous system is very much a central part and organizer of animal development, and also centrally important in a lot of the physiology you want to test when doing drug trials! And good luck keeping dec…

I don't have firsthand experience, but it seems like you could play with ectoderm development in conjunction with manual surgical techniques. Program the neural tube cells to die at a certain stage of development or when treated with certain media.

I think keeping the body alive will pose a much greater problem than preventing the brain from developing.

Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#44

Post by alsl100 »

Pudini wrote: post #42
mattigames wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is easy to claim the moral high ground when you don't define it, meaning where are you drawing the line? If I lose a leg in an accident and some scientists (plus doctors) can make a clone of my leg and my leg only to reattach it on my body is that moral or amoral? If yes then what about the complete lower body? If yes what about everything below the neck?

I think you are being silly. What's moral or amoral is dependant on whatever he is feeling at the moment. I very much doubt he has defined it.

In the spirit of a certain forum that likes the phrase "whatever s(he) is feeling at the moment":

The spergs on HN posit that brainless people have no rights since they don't feel anything. That is their chance to replace their rubber dolls with sex bots.

Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

lewispollard wrote: post #41
echelon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure if that post is a troll It's not. I've had this idea for some time, and I'm absolutely serious. We already grow human cells in culture. It's like growing an extremely delicate plant. The HeLa cell line is derived from Henrietta Lacks, and she's been dead for some time. There's nothing wrong with growing and manipulating cells like this. Eukaryotic cells are as brainless as prokaryotic ones. This is how…

> Personhood requires a brain. Period. Well, it requires a complex nervous system. How many neurons are there outside of the brain? How many neurons create a sensing, feeling being? It's an assumption to say that the only way for consciousness around organic feeling to exist is through a brain. We don't know that.

I was under the impression that the nervous system outside the brain is only propagating signals back and forth, and all the actual compute is localized in the brain. If that's true, then the GP's idea makes sense; if it isn't, then that's a can of worms we need to sift through eventually.

Re: Human body-on-chip platform could speed up drug testing

#47

Post by hprotagonist »

refurb wrote: post #14
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

If you can really, truly get liver-on-a-chip to work, it's going to positively change drug testing forever and will be the first huge win for tissue engineering. You can throw away animal models for tox screens forever, and that's great news. It will save vast amount of time and money. By using a much better proxy model for humans (slices aren't organs, they have different rheological characteristics and morphology,…

Meh. There are plenty of human cell line derived assays for things like membrane permeability, liver toxicity, etc. Those assays are super helpful, but don't replicate what happens in humans. They are good boxes to check, and can help weed out compounds early, but just because a compound passes the assay doesn't guarantee something weird won't pop up in humans.

right. i want to go beyond cell assays, i want high throughput organ slices that preserve important morphologies.

it’s not a perfect model, but i think it’s a better proxy than a mouse.

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