The virtual reality experience shows the cruelty of animal testing. Future technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence may soon put an end to this torture.
Animal testing is cruel, no matter what it’s good for. The unnatural conditions in the laboratory alone cause great suffering, not to mention pain in the experiment. Everyone should know about it. But words rarely penetrate consciousness as strongly as moving images or experiences.
That’s why Abduction uses highly immersive virtual reality. The experience of virtual reality puts us in the place of helpless laboratory animals and again raises the question: is this really necessary?
Common sense aside, perhaps virtual reality and artificial intelligence can help provide answers. Future technologies may even eliminate the need for animals in medical research.
The abducted VR experience involves a change of perspective and starts with an interesting mental structure. Humans consider themselves a superior species and therefore have power over flora and fauna at will. But what happens when a person loses his place as the crown of creation and suddenly has to fall to his knees?
In Abduction, you find yourself among a highly advanced alien species using their intelligence and technological superiority to perform cruel experiments on humans.
You experience abduction from your natural habitat and existence as a guinea pig. Aboard a spaceship, you’ll be mercilessly locked in a lab cage, overpowered by force, and forced to watch your fellow inmates undergo brutal experiments before it’s your turn.
The abduction was developed by virtual reality studio Prosper XR in collaboration with animal rights organization PETA. The VR experience is based on real events at Tulane University and Loyola University where lab animals were brutally tortured and mutilated.
Animal welfare groups leak information about the kidnappings to two universities in the US to get students’ attention. “Many students are unaware that on their own college campuses, frightened and confused animals are being tortured, maimed and killed in cold, barren labs, unable to escape or even understand what is happening to them,” said PETA senior director Saeed Rachel. . Owen.
The goal, she says, is “to educate young people about this cruelty, help them understand what it means to be cruel, and inspire them to join our call for more advanced non-animal research.” use of new technologies progress.
Dr. Gabi Neumann of Doctors Against Animal Experiments describes the ineffectiveness of animal testing, especially in drug development. Fewer than one in 10 drugs that successfully pass animal trials actually make it to the market—a remarkably low rate.
Neumann believes that this is mainly due to the inability to transfer the results of animal experiments to sick people. AI could work more efficiently here and make animal testing obsolete in the near future.
Since the beginning of last year, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Debiopharm has been focusing on human-centric drug development based on machine learning.
VeriSIM Life, established in 2017, has developed the “BIOiSIM” artificial intelligence system for this purpose. Digital twins of people showing how drugs behave in the body as they pass through the skin, whether orally or injected.
At the same time, the AI system simulates drug system interactions every hundredth of a second to generate key drug information such as organ toxicity or drug metabolism. The system makes predictions in seconds without any animal testing.
“Pharmaceutical companies are definitely far-sighted in investing in AI,” says Dr. Gaby Neumann. “Because it supports an approach that uses human data rather than relying on unsafe animal testing.”
Back in 2016, the University of Chicago Hospital replaced animal testing with virtual reality. For example, with the introduction of VR training, surgical training operations are performed in a VR headset rather than on a real pig.
The benefit for humans is that students can practice standard procedures in human anatomy virtual reality as often as they like and develop procedures. The amount of control required is reduced, students gain self-confidence and perform practical tasks more confidently. Not without reason, market researchers predict that virtual reality in medicine can become a multibillion-dollar market.
In addition to being a training app for surgeons, virtual reality can also be used as an anesthetic. In the UK, hospitals are already performing the first virtual reality surgeries and therapists are using virtual reality headsets to relieve chronic pain.
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Post time: Mar-13-2023