Studying Disease with Virtual Rats

"not to mention the moral issues involved in their use"

I stopped reading right there!!

Hooker

They're cute little rodents with big black eyes, long whiskers, and inquisitive noses. But they're still rats.

Ask any (seasoned) engineer, and they tell you that one test is worth a thousand simulations. Computer models and simulations have applications, to a point. Perhaps using computer models in an academic or teaching environment is appropriate, but for real research, I still vote for the real McCoy.

It sounds good in theory but on reading the article, the professor so far has $13million of funding for a proposal to create a computer model over the next five years. There is no guarantee that he can produce the software, no guarantee that the software will work, and $13million sounds a pitifully small amount for the complexity of the task ahead of him.

Speculating on the future direction of animal research based on the facts is at the very least premature, and more in the realm science fiction than science fact.

Journalists producing this sort of pseudo science are a menace to society and should be held up to the ridicule that they deserve.

Any test on a (virtual rat) must, of necessity, be only a virtual result, only duplicating that which is already known, and therefore, already included in the virtual model.

Now, certain probabilities could be studied, but only in a virtual environment, and therefore, necessarily, only achieving simulated results in a simulated environment.

Simplistically speaking, the real world environment will always have more "unknowns" than a virtual environment can have "knowns" and therefore a limited degree of virtual predictability...

The danger arises when human nature starts to insist that (science) has seemed to have progressed to the point there can be no more (surprises) when we will have set ourselves up to become the most surprised...

Virtual tests can mimic real test results, but they can't really become reality (except in the movies?...)