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Some of those mistakes they have made are totally inexcusable, and I don't want to come across as defending them. Just trying to get some more context because I
by Bedon292 4y ago
Some of those mistakes they have made are totally inexcusable, and I don't want to come across as defending them. Just trying to get some more context because I am clueless about the medical devices field.
Those devices are developing on top of decades of research and use and not pushing into something so new aren't they? I am guessing it is probably less, but how many animals have been killed over the entire development of artificial hearts?
And something like a heart can be developed almost entirely outside of a body right? You can make an artificial heart pump blood in a lab. And then test pumping blood through a cadaver. Is there any way to external experiments like that for the brain? I wouldn't expect a cadaver to have neurons firing to be able to measure them. What experiments are they doing on live animals that could be done without them while still learning the same information?
- iancmceachern 4y agoThank you for the great dialog and questions. You are exactly right. In artificial hearts you start with water, then glycol water that mimics the specific gravity and viscosity of blood, then dead blood from the Ranch 99, then you can get freshly drawn blood from an animal lab and keep that warm and circulate that, then you put the pump on the outside of an animal and plumb blood in and out, then after passing all that you do an animal implant. You can't use cadavers because they usually have their blood drained. A parallel of this entire workflow exists for brain cells. You can grow animal neurons in a test tube and teach them to fly a flight simulator. This work was published 18 years ago, likely done a fair bit before then: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6573-brain-cells-in-a-dish-fly-fighter-plane/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6573-brain-cells-in-a...