“Living robots”: Ethical questions about Xenobots
by Simon Coghlan, Ph.D. and Kobi Leins, Ph.D.
Xenobots have been called “novel living machines” and “living robots”. A co-author of the paper that recently introduced xenobots, said:
They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. [They’re] a new class of artefact: a living, “programmable organism”.
These “reconfigurable organisms” have already provoked philosophical and ethical questions.
Xenobots are under 1mm in size and composed of 500-1000 cells from frog (Xenopus laevis) embryos. After culturing extracted embryonic stem cells, micro-surgery tools help “glue” the naturally sticky cells together in a range of simple organismic configurations, e.g.…
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Environmental Ethics Featured Posts Philosophy & Ethics Science Technology Source Type: blogs
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