After I wrote yesterday's post, "How to build a bionic man," I went back through some files and came upon a related article, though a couple of years old (November 2010), which gives a very helpful overview of the various research projects under way to develop artificial parts that may before too very long be used with humans. (That article by Richard Gray appeared in the London Telegraph. Body parts mentioned include:
- Brain: a microchip implant that "encodes memories for storing elsewhere in the brain."
- Eyes: also a microchip that has already been used experimentally to restore vision. So far the results are "fuzzy," but that's only for starters.
- Ears: cochlear implants have been in use for decades, and now work is underway to refine the signal sent to the brain, making it easier to understand speech and enjoy music.
- Heart, arms, muscles, tendons, even the sense of touch.
Bear in mind that this report is over two years old, and a lot of work has been done since, but it is a useful overview.
Bear in mind, also, that all of these approaches are via "hardware"-- microchips, miniature pumps for hearts, and polymers for synthetic muscles and tendons. (See my post, "How to build a bionic man", on Rex the bionic man of mechanical parts now on display in the Science Museum in London.)
But that's not the only way, as for most of those body parts other research is under way to grow in labs replacement elements, including artificial hearts, corneas, arms, legs, ears and so on. You'll find some of that research already on this blog, with more to come, as I've tuned into that aspect of the research as background for my technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH: Playing God with Body, Soul, and Biotech.
Another post, Reversing the aging process using pig hearts, is one example of that kind of work under way.