NEW VISTA, OUTER RIM—Just a cycle ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its first owner died, it sits on a slab draped in tubes that quiver as they pump liters of blood substitute and other fluids through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste. As far as anyone knows, with many of its key functions intact but maybe awarness muffled by drugs, the brain hovers between life and death. As people subject it to experimental drugs, sensors record the brain's reactions, capturing hundreds of data points on its cells, proteins, and physiology. Then, after 24 hours in this state, it will be sliced into hundreds of pieces for more detailed study.
Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
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Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#22To be honest, if my only other option was to be buried, I would love to let my brain be connected to some machine that try to keep it as alive-like as possible.
Just please don't remove my brain before I'm 1000% certainly dead.
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#23I just finished reading "That Hideous Strength" (CS Lewis) this weekend where they have a disembodied head kept "alive", and some convicts in the pipeline whose heads/brains, it is implied, will be experimented on similarly. Lewis was remarkably prophetic.
The Dust Theory in Permutation City by Greg Egan pushes the concept to bizarre levels.
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#24Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
Reminds me of a certain scene from Knausgård's Morning Star.
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#25This 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.
This provides humanity with a greater good than gambling
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#26There is a documentary about this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052646/mediaviewer/rm713036545...
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#27Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
Well, we know how to make living brains insensate - that's who we all make it through surgery. Presumably they're doing something similar - or using some other well-understood mechanism - to ensure that's not the case. > 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…
That’s somewhat overstated.
We know anesthesia "works," and we know some of its molecular targets, but we do not fully know the mechanism by which it produces unconsciousness, ie whether anesthesia eliminates experience, or mainly blocks memory, report, and integrated neural processing.
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#28Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
> Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental.
There’s no such thing as live dissection. It’s vivisection.
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#29Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
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 could've done without reading the word almost
Re: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing
#30“We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?” Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 Ac…
Give credit where credit is due: Descartes, Kant, Putnam, etc.