Actually, it’s an eel.

Imagine a world of electronic eyes for the blind, electronic ears for the deaf and hard of hearing, even replacement limbs and organs.  Perhaps the Twenty-First Century will be the era of cybertechnology, and we will see many human woes solved.  There are all sorts of theoretically great machine bits and bobs we could add to the human body, if only we had some decent way to power them…

Well David LaVan from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) co-authored new research with Jian Xu of Yale University on a proposed solution for just that very problem.  Their answer?  The electric eel.

Electric eels have specialized cells called electrocytes that turn a biological chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into the electricity that they zap creatures with to earn their name.  The ATP itself is actually made from sugars and fats in the body.  It’s a completely organic way to turn what you eat into electricity.  Even the electrocyte cells themselves are basically just your ordinary every-day nerve tissue with a twist.  These electrocyte nerves work on the same principle as the nerves in your body, just at a slower cycle, which allows them to carry a much larger electrical charge than the simple weak nerve impulses that travel through your body every nanosecond.  It’s all natural, and it’s all there.  In theory we could begin developing technology to create a bio-electrical powerplant organ that could be used to power cybernetics, starting today.

The question is, will we?  Will we ever?

Making power from the fats and sugars moving through the blood stream or stored in the body is not really a new idea.  There are other approaches as well, although I have to say that this one so far impresses me the most.

But once we open that door, will we ever be able to close it?  Even limit it?

Personally, I don’t see why not.  But others disagree.  Which is one of the reasons why cybertechnology, implanting machines inside of human bodies, is not advancing very well at all.  People are afraid.  One day you’re talking about giving blind people sight again.  The next you’re trying to stop an army of Terminators.  At least, that’s how the fear mongers put it.

And so, great ideas like these, powering cyber-eyes and ears from engineered electrocyte “nerve” cells, based on the very same natural organic mechanisms that make the electric eel so shocking, go relatively no where.  They remain undeveloped.  Not because of who they can help, but because of what, if left unchecked, could be done with them.

I wonder what would have become of Alfred Bernhard Nobel and his deadly invention of dynamite (and the man who created the Nobel prize) would have come to in a day as paranoid as today.  A stable explosive?  Why that could kill people!  Never mind how many mountains it could move.

Let us hope that at some point we can get over fears and move forward into the future of the body electric.