[ExI] Stem cell breakthrough

[Ben]

Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

 > if you need surgery to connect them to the body you are going to do 
risky cutting and anaesthesia
...
 > Bodies are messy, complex environments that rarely are modular enough 
to allow magic bullets or neat replacement

So what's the solution to that?  Keep the messy, non-modular, 
ridiculously complex design, and figure out better and better ways to 
cut it, stitch it, numb it etc., or do a redesign of the whole damn 
thing, to make replacement and repair something that is part of the plan?

I'm convinced that a lot of the complexity of our bodies is not only 
unnecessary, but dangerous.  It's no wonder that we start falling apart 
after a few decades, and that when things do go wrong, we can't fix them 
without doing more damage to an already damaged body.  Most current 
medical practice seems to be the equivalent of thumping a malfunctioning 
tv in the hope that it will make things better, and the more advanced 
techniques might involve poking a screwdriver in a handy hole and 
wiggling it about.  The more adventurous researchers seem to have 
ambitions to develop methods to repair dodgy microchips, or re-solder 
circuit boards.  Nobody seems to be thinking of figuring out how to 
rebuild the thing so that faulty parts can be easily and quickly removed 
and replaced.  The sooner we stop thinking of the body as something 
magical and sacred, and start regarding it as what it is - a complex 
machine - the better, imo.

Stem cells will have their place, no doubt, and should be useful when we 
learn to build organs and tissues to order, but they aren't magic 
bullets.  There are no magic bullets.

Ben Zaiboc