This Week in Devices [6/28/13] : Could We Conduct Clinical Trials on Artificial Humans?This Week in Devices [6/28/13] : Could We Conduct Clinical Trials on Artificial Humans?

June 28, 2013

3 Min Read
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ThisWeekIn.jpgEvery week MD+DI curates content from all over the Web to share some of the most interesting articles, longreads, and videos with the medical device community.

This week: The ethics of building a functional brain inside a computer. The escalating battle against Lyme disease. The resurgence of research into psychedelic drugs. Saving lives with cells from aborted fetuses. And a crowdfunding campaign to create a robotic, 3-year-old boy.

 

 

 

Would it be Evil to Build a Functional Brain Inside a Computer?

 

As Obama's BRAIN initiative gears up along with the $1.6 billion Human Brain Project in the UK, an examination of the ethics of creating artificial humans and using them for testing and trials [io9]

 

"Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States, and the incidence is growing rapidly. In 2009, the C.D.C. reported thirty-eight thousand cases, three times more than in 1991. Most researchers agree that the true number of infections is five to ten times higher. "

 


The Lyme Wars

 

As Lyme disease infections grow, the battle against the disease escalates [The New Yorker]

 

"Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States, and the incidence is growing rapidly. In 2009, the C.D.C. reported thirty-eight thousand cases, three times more than in 1991. Most researchers agree that the true number of infections is five to ten times higher." 

 

Psychedelic Academe

 

Research into psychedelic drugs is making a comeback. [Chronicle of Higher Education]

 

"You don't have to spend much time at the six-day second international Psychedelic Science conference in downtown Oakland to learn that not all its 1,900 attendees are academic scientists, and that few are strangers to the power of mind-bending drugs."
 

Cell Division

 

The history of the controversial WI-38 cell strain, which has arguably saved more lives than any other...but is also harvested from aborted fetuses. [Nature]


"The woman was four months pregnant, but she didn't want another child. In 1962, at a hospital in Sweden, she had a legal abortion. The fetus — female, 20 centimetres long and wrapped in a sterile green cloth — was delivered to the Karolinska Institute in northwest Stockholm. There, the lungs were dissected, packed on ice and dispatched to the airport, where they were loaded onto a transatlantic flight. A few days later, Leonard Hayflick, an ambitious young microbiologist at the Wistar Institute for Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, unpacked that box."

 

Building a Robot with the Intelligence of a 3-Year-Old

 

A team of researchers have started an Indiegogo campaign to create the world's smartest robot. Dubbed Adam Zi, the robot will have the intelligence level of a 3-year-old child. [io9]


"Hanson Robotics has launched a new Indigogo campaign to create "the world's smartest robot." Named Adam Z1, the robot will eventually be able to speak, play with toys, draw pictures, and respond with emotions." 

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