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Well, I think he/she explained rather well the reason why - and the extent to which - such a thing would be useful. That plus knowing the amount of effort expen

Well, I think he/she explained rather well the reason why - and the extent to which - such a thing would be useful. That plus knowing the amount of effort expended in the rest of the field of medical research today ... it is indeed surprising that nobody has bothered to even try to produce a human body model. The feat probably wouldn't even require genetic engineering. (Then again, the amount of rote concepts in biology has steered me clear away from studying it beyond a single required high-school class, so what do I know.) My best guess is that there must be some kind of fear, among that field's practitioners, that some stupid politicians (gah, redundancy!) would take one look at the project and throw a hissy fit or worse.

nonbel 8y ago
>"knowing the amount of effort expended in the rest of the field of medical research today ... it is indeed surprising that nobody has bothered to even try to produce a human body model. The feat probably wouldn't even require genetic engineering." You seem to think that effort should translate into understanding. Nature doesn't work this way. In my opinion, most effort in biomed has been wasted due to poorly designed studies, which is due to NHST (null hypothesis significance testing; ie, testing a null hypothesis rather than the research hypothesis), and all the BS that procedure entails. So the real reason no one is trying to develop "a fully functional human body model" is that such a model is not even visible on the horizon for a single cell, or even sub-cellular organelle.
- mmirate 8y ago
  Computational model? No. As one of the other commenters in this thread has already said: model as in model organism.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    In that case, wouldn't "a fully functional human body model" mean an artificial human, which is even harder to develop than a computational model? Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model.
    - mmirate 8y ago
      > Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model. Not quite, but you are catching on. The rest is mostly a matter of cloning, and providing a standardized nurturing to each clone to eliminate confounding differences. (Perhaps in the far future we will be able to raise one clone, scan its brain, and overwrite the brains of each of the rest of its identical siblings with the scan results.) For some kinds of research, it even suffices to use a creature who has a hole where humans have a brain. ... ya know, biology sounds really exciting to laymen who don't know any better.
      - nonbel 8y ago
        This isnt something even remotely close to happening.

nonbel 8y ago

>"knowing the amount of effort expended in the rest of the field of medical research today ... it is indeed surprising that nobody has bothered to even try to produce a human body model. The feat probably wouldn't even require genetic engineering." You seem to think that effort should translate into understanding. Nature doesn't work this way. In my opinion, most effort in biomed has been wasted due to poorly designed studies, which is due to NHST (null hypothesis significance testing; ie, testing a null hypothesis rather than the research hypothesis), and all the BS that procedure entails. So the real reason no one is trying to develop "a fully functional human body model" is that such a model is not even visible on the horizon for a single cell, or even sub-cellular organelle.

mmirate 8y ago
Computational model? No. As one of the other commenters in this thread has already said: model as in model organism.
- nonbel 8y ago
  In that case, wouldn't "a fully functional human body model" mean an artificial human, which is even harder to develop than a computational model? Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    > Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model. Not quite, but you are catching on. The rest is mostly a matter of cloning, and providing a standardized nurturing to each clone to eliminate confounding differences. (Perhaps in the far future we will be able to raise one clone, scan its brain, and overwrite the brains of each of the rest of its identical siblings with the scan results.) For some kinds of research, it even suffices to use a creature who has a hole where humans have a brain. ... ya know, biology sounds really exciting to laymen who don't know any better.
    - nonbel 8y ago
      This isnt something even remotely close to happening.