Cybernetics

Yeah, that's the idea behind respirocytes, except that instead of most of the cell being dedicated to sustaining itself, most of it is dedicated to holding oxygen.

LoC978 wrote:the big thing about bone replacement (specifically the removal of natural bone marrow) is the creation of white blood cells.
Respirocytes only replace red blood cells... so your oxygen delivery needs are met. Immune system needs (replacement of white blood cells) would need to be met by something else. The Respirocyte wiki article mentions "microbivore robots" for that role... and doesn't explain what they are... but they sound like nanotech to me, which seems a little out of the GSG-verse's league.

Couldn't their repertoire of drugs take care of that?

The girls would die from that after a while.

The long bones, pelvic girdle and ribs contain marrow for blood rengeration. Those parts do not have to be replaced but augmented. The body still uses calcium, potasium and clorine for things other than building bones, so the supply is still needed.

So, replacing the arms/legs and augmenting the rest would be simple for GsG

Okay I have thought about the girls using artificial blood before. First thing you have to understand is that Respiroctes aren't just fiction, their reality. I'm aware of two kinds currently available: Hemoglobin based, and Perfluorocarbon based. Both offer their own advantages, and disadvantages. The article you link on wikipedia is a little bit on the optimistic side to put it lightly. Certainly such things are chemically possible. However you would need to properly saturate the respirocytes. Which means you either need to be breath off a tank of pure oxygen for a while, or you need much better lungs.

One major hurdle to using respirocyte is production in body. If you can't get the body to produce it, they your really just doing some interesting blood doping. With current tech I don't really see us designing an organ as complex as the spleen. [That is the one that produces red blood cells right?] We're talking about a level of bio-engineering, and nano-tech that I don't think even the GSG universe reasonable has. What's more is that there are serious questions as to long term [see days, and even months] use of current universal blood substitutes. I mean besides the possibly toxic nature of the Perfluorocarbon products there are some other real issues. You don't want to breath pure oxygen for too long. It does things to your body. Like make you high, and increase free radical count. You would essentially be doing the same thing if you made your blood supply super efficient.

One thing that might work is if you had a small limited supply in a sealed container. Then injected it, along with some other awesome chemicals I'm sure, into the body under certain circumstance. Say an increased adrenaline level. Even then though that's going to be a bitch to refill. Not to mention the space in 13 years chest is limited, and you need to level enough space for other things, like organs. Also imagine it malfunctioning, and just emptying it's load when ever it please. I not convinced the gain out weighs the cost yet, in either case.

TomatoSoup wrote:Yes, but if their bodies are primarily custom made, it could stand to reason that they are pretty resiliant. Hell, I don't remember them ever needing gasmasks, so their lungs probably filter bacteria as it enters.

No. NO. The filters on my gasmask last hours. I'm not putting a consumable in a cyborg that I have to change once a week. Especially if I would need to preform surgery to change it.

TomatoSoup wrote:But what I was saying about the abdominal cavity implant is that that would maintain the bloodstream, including the immune system.

Creating an organ to create white blood cell is tricky. Not as trick as redesigning the spleen to spit out super efficient blood cells. Basicly you would just be repacking bone marrow. However finding enough free space for it could be tricky. Mother nature had a long time to figure out a good way to make the human body work. No reason to throw out the baby with the bath water. Which is why I side with the camp that thinks the bones are simply armored. Which while still very complicated, is simpler in comparison. You have to make it porous enough to allow white blood cells out, yet strong enough to protect the marrow, and bone. That, and avoid the possibility of immune system rejection.

TomatoSoup wrote:But why not change it so that red blood cells don't use iron? Perhaps something that oxygen clings to more readily?

Growing a muscle in a vat is very simple compared to tweaking our respiratory system. I'm not saying this isn't an idea that doesn't have merit. I just don't think it's at the stage where it's ready for any real world applications just yet.

I would sit around, and polish this post some more but I have to get to work.

Wil wrote:With current tech I don't really see us designing an organ as complex as the spleen. [That is the one that produces red blood cells right?]

It's sort of a secondary creator for red blood cells, alongside the liver (which, as a drinking member of the US military, I'm sure you know the main function of). Incidentally, the spleen's main function is actually the collection and destruction of old red blood cells.

the wiki article on Erythropoiesis wrote:Erythropoiesis is the process by which red blood cells (erythrocytes) are produced. In human adults, this usually occurs within the bone marrow. In the early fetus, erythropoiesis takes place in the mesodermal cells of the yolk sac. By the third or fourth month, erythropoiesis moves to the spleen and liver. In humans with certain diseases and in some animals, erythropoeiesis also occurs outside the bone marrow, within the spleen or liver. This is termed extramedullary erythropoiesis.

Wileama wrote:

TomatoSoup wrote:But why not change it so that red blood cells don't use iron? Perhaps something that oxygen clings to more readily?

Growing a muscle in a vat is very simple compared to tweaking our respiratory system. I'm not saying this isn't an idea that doesn't have merit. I just don't think it's at the stage where it's ready for any real world applications just yet.

You wouldn't want to take the iron out of hemoglobin. For one thing, it would completely screw up the chains of amino acids that make up hemoglobin. Mess those up you get something like Sickle Cell Anemia, or worse.

Secondly, all that iron in the blood is important. Its an emergency reserve of a vital mineral for the rest of you body. And considering how much physical excertion the cyborgs go through, you'd want slightly elevated iron levels, because you'd be wearing out and creating new cells at a faster rate than normal. You could take supplements (which the girls undoubtably do) but the body is much more efficient than we ever could be at regulating that sort of thing. Just make sure they have a healthy diet.

So taking iron out of the blood = bad.

i think you guys are uderestimating the amount of modifications made,it says in the manga,Jose: 80% of their bodies are carbon frame carbon fiber and artificial muscle.
couple that with the artificial skin and very little of the original girl is left,and most of that is internal,with some of them having the internal organs considered unesscary (Uterus etc ) removed !

That's what I've been trying to tell everybody for a long time, really. But I think you're a little off about uteri - only Henrietta is generally believed to be missing her uterus, and the prevalent opinion is that the organ was removed either by the SWA doctors (due to it being greviously injured), or at the crime scene, by the killer of her family.

i don't think claes has one either as she was told that her progress was good and that they may increase her eostrogen dosage,and anyway removing their reproductive system would stop puberty in its tracks and slow down their development making it easier to control growth

You've got a point there. But myself and some others believe that the process of fitting the girls with cybernetic enhancements/limbs alone is enough to halt growth and mutilate them into permanent children, never mind removing their uteri, ovaries and what not (in case you haven't noticed, I'm one of those people who believes that the remodifications have left the girls unable to physically age).

and there is proof of that, six years after the series had kicked off the girls haven't aged a bit, Triela is 20!!

adjusting the pituatry gland would stop most growth, but you are right growth takes place at the ends of your bones ,followed later by muscle developement(this is why 12 year old girls and 14 year old boys are all beanpoles ),so remove the bones and replace them and you stop any physical growth height wise ,but it wouldn't stop mental development or sexual development,and hormones are the primary reason for this developement so remove their ovaries and replace it with pills and you can delay the onset of the mental and physical changes that occur during puberty,this would also make them easier to control

well on mental aspect, i guess that's why Etta is not asking Joze to sleep with her then...

for the physical, no wonder Etta does not have a rack yet

You make a good point about just how altered the girls may be Awinnell. However there are two reasons why that doesn't ensure their body chemistry hasn't been significantly tweaked. First of the 80% number is kind of fucking ridiculous. You, and I are about 70% water right? Biological life on the planet earth, is mostly comprised of water. If they where 80% carbon it wouldn't mean that even their organs would have to be solid chunks of carbon. Even a number as small as 20% would be a huge number for the body. 80% carbon fiber is just plan silly. At that point they would be more robot, then cyborg.

Second the human body is ridiculously complicated. We've been studying it for over 2000 years, and we still lack the understanding to design a new one from scratch. In fact in a lot of ways we wish our technology where as advanced as the human body. I mean think about, the entire human body is a massive collection of self replicating, self repairing, automatic nanotechnology. Our nantechnology is tubes, and balls made of carbon atoms. I heard about some one developing an artificial liver. It was basically a human liver in a plastic bag.

I mean look at dialysis machines, they are not tiny by any measure of the word. It will be a long time before we can put one of those in a person. What's more is a Dialysis machine doesn't do everything a kidney does. It filters the blood alright, but it doesn't produce the hormones like the kidney does. We can't get a dialysis machine in the human body, we certainly can't put a full blown chemical plant in there. You don't just put a cooling tower in some ones chest. The replacement would have to nanotechnology.

The only really working technology we have is our own bodies. Which we can't just go, and tell to do what ever we want. Where still figuring out the basics of how to copy, and paste DNA around. We don't understand it nearly well enough to start making arbitrary changes yet. We most certainly can't write the string of DNA need to pump a designer Perfluorocarbon molecule out of a cell. Even if you could write that kind of DNA string, Macavity made a great point. The human body has been optimized pretty well over the last what ten thousand years? As a result a lot of things are interconnected in ways we don't fully understand. Just look at reducing the iron content of blood. If you can explain to me how we would go about tweaking the respiratory system, I am all ears. I'm willing to bet though I can explain why it doesn't fit into tech level we see in Gunslinger Girls. I would be delighted if you could disprove me though.

**EDIT**
Oh man I was so focused on the my previous point, I completely forgot about this point. Awinnell, you make a pretty good argument for removing the Uterus. There is one thing that bugs me though. Why does Triela still have hers? If removing the uterus was that helpful in controlling growth, or some such they, why haven't they? All I can think of, is that it's not really required. Maybe you have a better answer though. Honestly I'm just playing a bit of devils advocate on this one. I'm not sure your wrong, but there are questions.

My opinion is that the ones who don't have uteri had those organs injured for some reason or other. There's reasons why those things exist apart from sexual development.

actually what he said is 80% had been replaced i don't think he meant that the replacement was all carbon or carbon fibre only the skeletal structure.Actually the nanotechnology part makes sense here as it can be used to make carbon nano tubes which can be spun and woven and are strong enough that they are being proposed as the material of choice to build a space elevator !
i lean towards a replacement of most of the major bones, possibly with cloned bone marrow inserted,nobody said these bones had to be solid,if you were really smart you could make this marrow produce a universal blood that has none of the protein factors that define blood types, removing any rejection problems and allowing the girls to donate their blood to their handlers or each other in an emergency
it states in the manga that Petra who is as everyone knows a cheaper knock off of the originals has had her internal organs muscles and skin replaced with artificial ones,they decided to save costs by reinforcing several of her existing bones instead of replacing them,which suggests that the originals must have been more extensively modified with more of their skeleton replaced

West Nile wrote:for the physical, no wonder Etta does not have a rack yet

Well i guess that this detail can change in a hurry... after all, There are guys who dress up as a girl, using some sort of harnas that is basically a second torso with boobs attached. Looks quite realistic if you ask me. (But dont ask me how I know that... only thing I'll say is: "Yeah, I found out the hard way...")

Awinnell wrote:Actually what he said is 80% had been replaced. I don't think he meant that the replacement was all carbon or carbon fibre only the skeletal structure.

And that would make sense, it really would. However my point is that doesn't tell us anything about the construction of the artificial organs. For all we know their just cloned organs in kevlar bags.

Awinnell wrote:Actually the nanotechnology part makes sense here as it can be used to make carbon nano tubes which can be spun and woven, and are strong enough that they are being proposed as the material of choice to build a space elevator!

Well yes Carbon nanotubes, and bucky balls are in fact pretty cool materials. My point is though we don't make them with Nanotechnology. Hell I heard about one method of making carbon nanotubes that used regular scotch tape. That's my point is that we don't really know how to make nanoscale machines yet. Well no that's not entirely true, but for the most part they're as complicated as a lever. It would make sense to use some nanomaterials in the construction of the girls.

Awinnell wrote:If you were really smart you could make this marrow produce a universal blood that has none of the protein factors that define blood types.

Okay I want to first of experess that I'm about to wade into some stuff that is above my level of expertise. That said a red blood cell without antigens on its surface is basically O negative? Also since part of the function of antigens is to promote the generation of anti-bodies, wouldn't you have a weaker immune system if you where O negative? Now the kind of genetic manipulation your talking about is possible. However your still probably looking at five to ten years of lab work to figure what changes you need to make. Plus another two, or three years to figure how to make the changes. Even then all your really doing is taking the 'best' of what the human body has to offer. I'm all for that kind of alteration. When you start talking about designing a better red blood cell then already exists in nature. That is when I'm going to start raising issues.

Awinnell wrote:I lean towards a replacement of most of the major bones. Possibly with cloned bone marrow inserted, nobody said these bones had to be solid... It states in the manga that Petra, who is as everyone knows a cheaper knock off of the originals... They decided to save costs by reinforcing several of her existing bones instead of replacing them. Which suggests that the originals must have been more extensively modified with more of their skeleton replaced.

You've made a good case for artificial bones. Besides they have to replace the bones in the limbs when ever they replace a said limb. It would be quicker to only clone the marrow, instead of the entire bone. There would still be a complicated process to give the bone the right structure to remain strong while still allowing the marrow to function. Which would explain why it would be cheaper to only armor bones in the torso, and head.

Wil wrote:Which would explain why it would be cheaper to only armor bones in the torso, and head.

and the forearms. don't forget the shield...

It would make more sense to replace those, your going to have to do it every time you change out the arm, so those bones are probably the same as the first gen. Same with the legs.

i believe that Wlieama is correct the 2nd gens have fully replaced arms and legs ,hence the comment that her hips and shoulders are weaker than the original models ,because the torso had been reinforced rather than replaced

Wileama wrote:

Awinnell wrote:If you were really smart you could make this marrow produce a universal blood that has none of the protein factors that define blood types.

Okay I want to first of experess that I'm about to wade into some stuff that is above my level of expertise. That said a red blood cell without antigens on its surface is basically O negative? Also since part of the function of antigens is to promote the generation of anti-bodies, wouldn't you have a weaker immune system if you where O negative?

This is actually false. The antigens on the blood surface aren't really an important part of the immune system. They are for system identification only. Meaning, that they are there to detect foreign materials in the blood. The thing is though, blood really is the same no matter what antigens on the surface. Someone who is O- is just as healthy as someone who is AB+. Those antigens can be removed without real problem. Now if you wanted to remove the MHC markers on them, you'd have a more serious problem. Those ones identify very specifically that that cell belongs to this body and not any other. Removing those without completely replaces the entire immune system would be impossible.

~ Macavity

Thanks for clearing that up Macavity. I tried to research it a bit before I spoke, but I still wasn't certain. Anyway this information doesn't change my opinions.

but if most of their organs are artificial anyway and the marrows been engineered and cloned,then you have already removed the immune system and probably replaced it with one that does what you want !

No, because you'd have to replace the entire lymphatic system. Which would be like having to replace the entire bloodstream. It goes just about everywhere in the body. Not possible.

~ Macavity

ok i bow to your superior knowledge !

Chapter 59 shows Henrietta in some kind of tank, but there is a clean and detailed drawing of her left arm without the skin and the musculature extends up into the chest (much cleaner then we saw in Chapter 1).

Do it appears while the arms and legs are replaceable units (per Triela), it doesn't look like it's a simple thing to do based on what they'd have to work with. This might be why they didn't do as much work with the Series 2 models to make such replacements easier and less invasive, which would likely mean less conditioning drug needed during said surgeries which would help extend their lifespan.

Kiskaloo wrote:Chapter 59 shows Henrietta in some kind of tank, but there is a clean and detailed drawing of her left arm without the skin and the musculature extends up into the chest (much cleaner then we saw in Chapter 1).

Do it appears while the arms and legs are replaceable units (per Triela), it doesn't look like it's a simple thing to do based on what they'd have to work with. This might be why they didn't do as much work with the Series 2 models to make such replacements easier and less invasive, which would likely mean less conditioning drug needed during said surgeries which would help extend their lifespan.

In order for the cyborgs to have super strength and super speed, their limbs must be securely fastened to the rest of the body. Whats the use of having an arm capable of lifting a ton when the shoulder joint and collar area breaks at 120 pounds?

The units (as I see it) are replaceable at the anchor points and along the joints, making it easy to replace. Artficial muscle are also replaced as units.

Bumped for the following video:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13378036