Boffins build CYBORG-MOTHRA but not for evil: For search & rescue

A biologist writes: Yeah right, so they are going to have a huge colony of Manduca sexta with a highly automated electrode implantation facility attached just waiting for a suitable disaster? Not the aftermath of a hurricane where the winds still tend to be on the high side, or during tornado season would be my bet.

A 'distributed aerial network' sounds a neat thing to have, right? But the devil is in the detail.

Oh, I really, really hope there won't be any of those windy helicopters or fan bladed micro-drones flying through the air while the mini mothra are deployed. It could be carnage out there: drones falling from the sky with hardware bugs.

"I'm not sure how much use a moth will be in airlifting the victims out of the disaster zone."

Frank Zappa has already demonstrated this principal in his tale of Billy The Mountain" in which the protagonist goes into a telephone booth, covers his body with maple syrup and used the resulting swarm of flies to raise said booth into the sky.

Sigh, as if no scientist ever saw a big pot of research money and how their research could get them some of that to do that experiment they have always wanted to do.

The science of immunology has come on in leaps and bounds in recent decades compared to when I was an undergrad. Why? well off the back of all the funding for AIDS research of course. A vast amount of absolutely basic science was done funded by AIDS money. Sure it needed to be done to understand the actions of the virus. But not all of it was strictly necessary, in hindsight.

Similarly a lot of good basic cellular biology is done in cancer research institutes and groups. Developmental biology (my area) too. Lots of oncogenes play vital roles during embryonic development and to understand their normal function . . .

Not all research funded by organisation X is absolutely focussed and enslaved to the absolute, iron clad, narrow aims of organisation X.

After all have humans not been gaming systems for millennia?

Re: ..paved with good intentions..

So we are to abandon research that can possibly be used for evil?

Well I guess we would be much better off without nuclear power as that has been abused. Explosives, nope, to hell with all the good they've done as far as civil engineering and mining. Magnets, the compass is awful handy but we shouldn't know anything about those terrible things lest someone perfect that rail gun technology. Hempen rope, no sir, way too easy to affix a sharp rock to a stick with that evil stuff.

Technology is not inherently good or bad, it just matters what people wish to do with it. Don’t attack scientists for pushing boundaries and furthering the scope of human understanding, attack dirty politicians who pervert said technology for selfish and stupid ends.

They can be annoying enough as it is, and now you have to wonder if they're spying on you as well.

Erm... I mean moths, of course, not GCHQ, which we already know probably are!

A possible mind to machine interface allowing those with ruined bodies to communicate with the outside world and quite possibly experience sensations that would be impossible for them today and instead of these ridiculous “ice bucket challenges” actually do something about diseases like ALS or spinal injuries. And of course the enslavement of higher order animals like bomb diffusing dolphins, or recently deceased marines being used as an auxiliary division of zombie soldiers following absolutely any order without the slightest bit of humanity to stop them from massacring whomever is considered politically expendable.

Re: Immoral research avenue

i wouldn't worry too much about the use of implanted electrodes to control behavior when less intrusive methods exist today.  i would estimate that approximately 30% of the population in just about any country can be made to vote a particular way or buy a thing by the simple loud and continuous repetition of a few lies.  these methods seem to work particularly well when used to trigger a fear response to a group of other people who, as a group, never harmed the "victim."

[here on the left side of the pond that percentage seems much higher in many parts of my country]