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Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

science.org

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Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#121

Post by runjake »

jolmg wrote: post #111
c420 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really a distinction between torturing humans and torturing pets? Aside from torture being torture, pets are members of people's families!

> pets are members of people's families! If you could only rescue one member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize the pet over a human member of your family?

>> pets are members of people's families!

> If you could only rescue one member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize the pet over a human member of your family?

If you could only rescue one family member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize a stranger over a member of your family?

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#122

Post by something765478 »

c420 wrote: post #108
hungryhobbit wrote: post #105

[flagged]

Is there really a distinction between torturing humans and torturing pets? Aside from torture being torture, pets are members of people's families!

Why not? There's a difference between castrating a human and castrating an animal, right?

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#123

Post by booleandilemma »

NDlurker wrote: post #16

This is legal but I can't legally pay another adult for sex or take drugs that could harm me? And there are many restrictions on gambling. It's weird how some morals are legislated but not others.

Can't make having fun too easy. It ruins the control the elites have over us.

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#124

Post by Filligree »

Gooblebrai wrote: post #107
dhosek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment. ⸻ 1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me becau…

> the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it The short story "Transition Dreams" by Greg Egan touches on this concept

I can strongly recommend reading... anything else by Egan, just not that one.

It's not that it's bad. The problem's the opposite: He poses an existentially dreadful question which I can't definitively answer with 'no'.

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#125

Post by BalinKing »

joegibbs wrote: post #89
garethsprice wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures.

I don't trust them to always give the brain propofol. The subject has no way of reacting because they have no body, so what are they going to do?

Towards the end of the article: "the company plans to eventually remove the anesthesia from some brain slices"

Here's hoping the idea is that the slices will be really small, or something, because frankly the whole thing is utterly horrifying enough as-is.

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#126

Post by BalinKing »

JimTheMan wrote: post #119
efitz wrote: post #116

As long as this practice is legal then I am unwilling to be an organ donor.

All of these comments are making me realise that the US is an incredibly low trust environment, where people think horrific things are going to happen to them without the their/or their families consent. And who am I to judge? Maybe that is the reality.

> horrific things are going to happen to them without the their/or their families consent

Indeed, that is (allegedly) the case with organ donation: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/organ-transplants-dono...

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#127

Post by aceofspades19 »

Bratmon wrote: post #98
tyre wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation required. Specifically for a western country happening at any notable scale via organ donors.

Citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/us/kentucky-organ-donatio... Organ harvesting of living patients hasn't fully scaled up as a practice yet, but it's definitely a major source of income for some rural hospitals.

The claim was there was multiple "organ harvesting scandals". Upon reading, it seems like the system worked, the doctors refused to retrieve the organs because the patient showed signs of life. It also looks like they have worked to put in place stricter protocols for organ retrieval since then.

I would say accidentally mistaking the patient is dead in any case is hardly the same as purposefully harvesting the organs from people they know are alive to get paid. The article does not state any evidence to suggest they are doing this.

There is obviously going to be some pressure to make a decision to retrieve the organs in the interest of not wasting something that could save another's life as there is a limited time frame where these organs can be viable. There is a huge distinction between that and going to patients that have no doubt they are alive and harvesting their organs.

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#128

Post by wanoir »

DontBreakAlex wrote: post #86
ethanrutherford wrote: post #17

This makes me feel physically ill. It's like something straight out of a sci-fi dystopia, how did this get approved? Who determined that reinjecting biological activity into a human brain is definitely not some form of reanimation? If they're using heavy sedation to prevent electrical activity, is that not tacit admission they're not 100% sure that consciousness might return otherwise? How did this pass ethics review…

[flagged]

This is an interesting point

I think for direct comparison, the way of re-animating the brain described in the article would need to be attempted on the cardiac arrest patient as well so as to be sure it isn’t a “revival”-capable method

Might already be an obvious answer to practitioners in the field

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#129

Post by openasocket »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #106
openasocket wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article was written 16 years ago and misses a lot as a result. it doesn’t mention the new allegations, including those documented in Leaving Neverland. It also glosses over the accusations in the 1990s. It’s papered over that those allegations were lies, but he settled the lawsuit with them for over $23M.

Settling isn't an admission of guilt. It's plausible that he wanted to avoid the media circus that would inevitably result, and given that fighting it out in court was significantly more damaging to his reputation than settling the 90s case was despite being exonerated, he was probably right to settle. The article does also touch on the indications that those allegations were also not credible, although it doesn't do…

> I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive

It’s worth noting that it’s common for it to take years or decades for victims to speak out against an abuser. Especially when the victims are children. Especially when the abuser is a prominent figure, like the literal King of Pop.

I’m not going to try and convince you that these allegations are credible (though I believe they are), I just want you to think about how a child victim might behave in that situation. There’s almost never any objective evidence or 3rd party witnesses of abuse. It’s almost always the word of one person against another. And it may be years before a child victim even fully understands what was happening, and years beyond that to come to terms with it.

Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

#130

Post by sokoloff »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #44
hungryhobbit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between what he did to children, and what his parents did to him, it's hard to really blame the guy for having extreme sleep problems though.

> what he did to children The media and the people who bought into their shameless attention-grabbing lies are the reason he had sleep problems. He was unanimously acquitted of all counts, but the media made his life into a living hell by consistently portraying him as a pedophile because it drove incredible engagement numbers. A justice system should be "innocent until proven guilty", and yet MJ was deemed guilty ev…

> yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent.

He was not “proven innocent”; that’s not how the legal system works. He was “found not guilty” which is a much lower standard than “proven innocent”.

(OJ Simpson was similarly found not guilty; do you think he was also “proven innocent”?)

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