• Question: Do you think that the recent development of turning skin cells into brain cells will have a negative effect on future life e.g. robots with human brains turn evil and threaten mankind?

    Asked by mennie13 to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Mark Burnley

      Mark Burnley answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      This is an interesting development, but my understanding of it is that these cells are being used to understand Parkinson’s Disease. So at the moment they are just being used to study nerve cells and how Parkinson’s affects them. This work is in its very early stages and may not even be used in the human body.

      As for robots with human brains turning evil and threatening mankind, I think there is far more evidence of humans themselves turning evil and threatening mankind. After all, a robot will only be as evil as the robot’s inventor. Most of the people I know who make robots are very nice people (you might even find a few of them in other zones), so robots taking over the world to do evil stuff is highly unlikely!

    • Photo: Jenni Tilley

      Jenni Tilley answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      This is not entriely new research – in 2004 scientists transplanted some cells from patients skin into their brain and reported a significant slowing of mental decline (http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040428/full/news040426-7.html)

      The recently reported research takes this a step further. Instead of turning the skin cells back into stem cells (the original cells with no particular function that turn into specfici cells with particular functions in different environments), they have managed to get the skin cells to ‘switch’.

      This is very exciting and could have a massively positive impact on people’s lives. So, no. I’m not worried. I’m very interested to see what will happen next…

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