Meet the bionic rat.
 

So apparently these scientists made a bunch of rats remote controllable.

My first instinct is "Oh man that's the coolest thing ever!" Then I kind of saw how some people might see it as cruel. Though really when you read how its down it's not to terribly different than most training. In fact it might be better because there is no negative stimuli in the process. Plus there is a whole host of useful things these rats can do. Things people have been struggling to design robots to do. All in all it sounds like a good idea to me as long as no one forgets that the rats are alive and deserve respect. That is don't force them to injure or kill themselves on purpose.

Too late.

Or you could read a little further and see this:

But really there is a distinct difference between putting the rat in dangerous situations and intentionally forcing the rat into suicide. Namely rats can get around in a collapsed building without to much danger of causing a cave in or harming itself. Likewise landmines would be horribly ineffective if things as light as a small rat or mouse could set them off. Generally you have to be approaching 50 pounds worth of weight to trigger them. As such any clearing the mouse would be doing would consist of rather safely sniffing out and marking the mines not setting them off. There are much much better and quicker ways to clear a mine field if all you want to do is set them off. There are in fact several purpose built mine proof machines designed to do exactly that.

These uses while dangerous aren't especially bad for the rat as they aren't guaranteed to die or get injured. In fact, there is a relatively low chance of the rat being harmed. I mean even aside from the rat being a living thing aspect the electronics and the surgery would probably make it prohibitively expensive to simply treat the rats as disposable.

And when it's all said and done, it's only a rat, anyway...

Actually, they said the cost of the basic equipment (microprocessor, reciever, and antennae) is no more than $40. I don't know how expensive the surgery might be, but probably not too expensive.

I'd rather a rat get blown to smitherines then another person. Specially since rats are otherwise fairly useless.

Wow. That is incredible. I mean, really. Wow.

This is an amazing development. I can see this being very useful. There isn't much of a moral quandry.

Among other things, I have to assume it's gonna be really cost-ineffective to go install a lot of electronics in a rat and then having them die with whatever high degree of regularity. The article says it's what, $40 worth of parts per rat, plus whatever to attach the setup to them and then get them trained.

I do have to note that this sounds like a precursor to one of the various terrifying science-fiction dystopias. But it's not like that's any different from any two out of three news stories you see anymore.

Hmm... these kinds of bionics have potentials, but I'd prefer augmentation.
Either prefentive augmentation, such as being able to reinforce weak or defectives spines and bones within the womb or the kinds that involve exoskeletons (which is being developed, also in Japan) in either medical or work-related instances.

Seems somewhat more ethical than installing Windows Vista in people's brains.

Then again, who am I? Just a simple Dutch guy.

EDIT: of course, I realize this is, right now, in the experimental phase and it's being performed on rats, but as stated. It's just a step.

This reminds me of that one comic We3, with the rats who did maintenance work and they could have, like, drills attached to their faces and it was really quite cool but then they were sent to bring in the three escaped animals and they tore apart a bridge.

This kind of thing really does sound quite neat, and indeed rather ethical. I would imagine the surgery is minimally invasive, since I gather the wires are taken out and put back in later with their retired subjects. And as a side note, I saw something similar on the Discovery channel not too long ago about a guy who implanted a chip in his brain and was able to move a robotic arm as well as "see" with sonar, using a special helmet rig he made. So really, if humans (or a human, I suppose is the case) are doing these kinds of things, there can't be much wrong doing to it rats.

Of course, there is the whole potential for remote-control biological weapons if this takes off, but so far it seems like a really interesting idea, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.