Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum "cybernetic rat"--This is extremely creepy....

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080813192458.ud84hj9h&show_article=1

I suppose it is inevitable, but I find this quite disturbing. Scientists have made a robot that is controlled by signals from rat brain cells (not a whole brain, but bunches of cells from rat fetal tissue). Doesn't appear very effective at anything so far, and when I think about it, I can't think of a real reason to object to this, but it still disturbs me! I suppose the argument in favor is that we will learn a lot about consciousness and how learning takes place, by seeing what happens as the brain learns and develops and we figure out more effective ways to organize the brain and hook it up to its robot body. Or maybe that's an argument against doing it! Learning that stuff could lead to some scary scenarios.

I agree completely - this is very disturbing and troubling experimentation going on here. It is frankly sick to take brain matter from a living creature and put it in a human created machine - next thing they'll be putting human infant brain cells in military robots. This kind of experimentation should be banned by the world community. Just disgraceful abuse of animals and living creatures with souls.

One can expect arguments and controversy based on broad ethical perspectives and religious/philosophical orientation. I suppose that, among 'thinking' people, those who take your view are likely to be - or ought to be - vegetarian or vegan. That’s a very small minority.