If NASA simulate physics (with programming) precisely enough to accurately calculate what will happen when they send a rocket into space, can biologists simulate the human body to discover what will happen when, for example, new medicine is introduced to it?

Question

I was thinking a reinforcement learning algorithm could be a trained in a simulated environment to find a cure for cancer, testing how every which complex process of a new medicine or even nanotechnology might react to its environment. Am I way off?

In: Biology

Answer 1

No. The human body is orders of magnitude more complex to model mathematically than spaceflight dynamics.

Also mathematical models are useless unless you validate them with empirical tests, and unlike autonomous spacecraft, there are ethical issues involved in using real human beings to validate what would need to be a very invasive model.