Engineering on Friday : animals in testing

29 Nov 2011

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It is unfortunate that animals are used for scientific testing. Imagine all the creatures that were needed to test every drug, every medical device, and every implant. There has been much suffering for our benefit.

Take the latest in augmented reality from the University of Washington in Seattle, for example. They used sedated rabbits to test their augmented reality contact lens. If the lens did have issues, the test rabbits would have lost their eyes. Luckily, they were all ok.

MIT put electrodes behind the eyes of monkeys in an attempt to induce false ghost images in the monkey's eyesight. The phosphene effect worked, but no word on the condition of the eyes afterward.

Fortunately, some are working to rid science and medicine of such cruelty and misfortune. University of Central Florida wants to put an artificially living, complete, human body on a chip. Testing would then be the burden of artificial biology. Hope they finish soon, I look forward to more rabbits out and about.

Cabe

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