Biology research question for a story
October 30, 2018 7:57 PM Subscribe
I'm writing about a person whose frontal torso wall has been replaced by a transparent pane. Ignoring the surreality of the basic setup, it would be helpful to know if someone with a frontally transparent torso could offer anything to biological/medical science. Or would that not be of much use in the modern day?
My instinct was to assume such a person would be useful, but now I'm not sure. Like, when I try to imagine what exactly one would monitor through the pane and to what end...I got nothing. The last time I studied bio was in the ninth grade, though, so this may just be a case of not knowing where to begin.
Basically, I'm wondering if there's any plausible reason for a research scientist to want to directly observe a healthy person's internal torso. A potential reason doesn't have to be ethical or even legal; the only question is whether having access to a transparent torso could teach science anything new about the human body. If your answer is that you see no imaginable use for such a thing in the 21st century, that is definitely helpful feedback! If your answer is yes, some elaboration would of course be helpful, but the yes/no aspect of my question matters more than the details.
More information:
- The person in question is anatomically female, young, and in good health.
- Assume this person might consent to any possible experiment/procedure, as long as there is no risk of serious injury.
- Only this one person has the window, so no comparative experiments can take place.
Tl;dr In the context of biological/medical research, would there be any theoretical benefit to studying a live "visible woman"?
My instinct was to assume such a person would be useful, but now I'm not sure. Like, when I try to imagine what exactly one would monitor through the pane and to what end...I got nothing. The last time I studied bio was in the ninth grade, though, so this may just be a case of not knowing where to begin.
Basically, I'm wondering if there's any plausible reason for a research scientist to want to directly observe a healthy person's internal torso. A potential reason doesn't have to be ethical or even legal; the only question is whether having access to a transparent torso could teach science anything new about the human body. If your answer is that you see no imaginable use for such a thing in the 21st century, that is definitely helpful feedback! If your answer is yes, some elaboration would of course be helpful, but the yes/no aspect of my question matters more than the details.
More information:
- The person in question is anatomically female, young, and in good health.
- Assume this person might consent to any possible experiment/procedure, as long as there is no risk of serious injury.
- Only this one person has the window, so no comparative experiments can take place.
Tl;dr In the context of biological/medical research, would there be any theoretical benefit to studying a live "visible woman"?
I imagine that someone would come up with an experiment to do that could be useful. There are after all cannulated cows that are used in research to this day. One consideration is the amount of transparent material that there would be. There are a lot of layers between the skin and the vicera, as evidence by the "visible woman" where there really isn't much you can see and most of the muscles have been removed from the toy. What mainly sticks out are the small intestines and a bit of the lower liver. If the muscles weren't transparent then all you could see would be abdominal muscles and that wouldn't really be very useful. (If the muscles aren't there then essentially their guts would spill out onto the floor.)
posted by koolkat at 2:32 AM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by koolkat at 2:32 AM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]
Training students on catheter and/or laparoscopic procedures?
posted by teremala at 5:10 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by teremala at 5:10 AM on October 31, 2018
Something similar is done to cows for research to observe the digestive system. Google "fistulated cows."
posted by slogger at 6:16 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by slogger at 6:16 AM on October 31, 2018
Cannulated cows were an elementary school field trip for my midwestern class, so there’s that option.
posted by bq at 9:43 AM on October 31, 2018
posted by bq at 9:43 AM on October 31, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by not_the_water at 9:14 PM on October 30, 2018