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A breakthrough in restoring micro-circulation has allowed scientists to keep pig brains alive outside of a body:
In a step that could change the definition of death, researchers have restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs and kept the reanimated organs alive for as long as 36 hours.
The feat offers scientists a new way to study intact brains in the lab in stunning detail. But it also inaugurates a bizarre new possibility in life extension, should human brains ever be kept on life support outside the body.
The work was described on March 28 at a meeting held at the National Institutes of Health to investigate ethical issues arising as US neuroscience centers explore the limits of brain science.
During the event, Yale University neuroscientist Nenad Sestan disclosed that a team he leads had experimented on between 100 and 200 pig brains obtained from a slaughterhouse, restoring their circulation using a system of pumps, heaters, and bags of artificial blood warmed to body temperature. There was no evidence that the disembodied pig brains regained consciousness. However, in what Sestan termed a "mind-boggling" and "unexpected" result, billions of individual cells in the brains were found to be healthy and capable of normal activity.
It's possible that the level of function could be increased, and the brains could be kept alive indefinitely:
Sestan now says the organs produce a flat brain wave equivalent to a comatose state, although the tissue itself "looks surprisingly great" and, once it's dissected, the cells produce normal-seeming patterns.
The lack of wider electrical activity could be irreversible if it is due to damage and cell death. The pigs' brains were attached to the BrainEx device roughly four hours after the animals were decapitated.
However, it could also be due to chemicals the Yale team added to the blood replacement to prevent swelling, which also severely dampen the activity of neurons. "You have to understand that we have so many channel blockers in our solution," Sestan told the NIH. "This is probably the explanation why we don't get [any] signal."
Sestan told the NIH it is conceivable that the brains could be kept alive indefinitely and that steps could be attempted to restore awareness. He said his team had elected not to attempt either because "this is uncharted territory."
Next step: hooking it up to a computer?
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Friday April 27 2018, @11:36PM (5 children)
Azuma is peddling a deathist cliché that will be smashed apart by life extension once the technology arrives. Ask some supercentenarians if they feel like offing themselves just because they have "seen it all". Some of them may be depressed, but others are clearly happy, even at that advanced age with crappy bodies. I think supercentenarians with the bodies of ~30 year-olds (because that's how life extension will work: preventative and proactive anti-aging damage repair) can either figure out something to do with their time, or go BASE jumping repeatedly. On Venus.
It's not a surprise to hear this view, given that life extension would be such a monumental change, and pose a direct challenge to many religions. Billions of humans lived out their lives (some very short) and died before the technology could be developed. The early adopters will have beat out everyone from the cavemen to their parents. Maybe they will feel some guilt about that. Of course, billions of people lived before air conditioning or the car existed. The anti-aging generation will probably come to terms with it.
"Anti-aging bad" is a common trope in sci-fi because it makes a more compelling story than "Human lives for thousands of years, conducting some science experiments, or engaging in a lot of leisure activities, forming many fleeting relationships, but overall is happy with the arrangement."
If immortality is endless suffering, what if you're a masochist? Maybe you'll be into it. And if you're only biologically immortal, don't you still have options to commit suicide? Just make sure that you really want to become the first person to travel into a black hole.
You may also have the option of temporarily or partially mindwiping yourself, repeatedly, and living in VR worlds. Which could make interstellar travel bearable [soylentnews.org], assuming you're not just frozen.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday April 28 2018, @06:26AM
May I recommend the short novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [duckduckgo.com] which deals with these very topics.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:09PM (3 children)
Again...infinite. Not "a long time." Infinite. Besides which, the explicitly Christian idea of eternal life is either you spend it kissing Yahweh's ass, or you spend it on fire (with variations on what "on fire" means for the more squeamish, squishy believers...).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday April 29 2018, @12:30AM
Myself and another commenter gave solutions to the infinite boredom problem. Natural or deliberate memory loss, or temporarily overwriting the mind and entering into a simulated reality.
Achieving anti-aging would technically mean having an indefinite lifespan. Not infinite. You could still die in a war, by murder, suicide, or a very catastrophic accident (very fatal conditions are likely to be encountered if people are traveling throughout the solar system). Beyond that, you also have to move out of or further out into the solar system at some point before the Sun becomes a red giant. And then on a much larger timescale, possibly orders of magnitude more than a trillion years, you may be contending with the heat death of the universe. The ultimate fate of the universe isn't known, but a 100+ more years of physics research will probably give us a better idea. Even an enslaved immortal brain-in-vat could die from a freak gamma-ray burst or the ultimate death of the universe. If the universe is not slated to actually die, such as in a "big crunch", then theoretically you could run out of accessible usable resources. Including usable energy if you are "living" as a mind uploaded to a computer.
An "infinite" lifespan seems unlikely to be achieved, unless you figure out how to travel back to the past repeatedly or hop into a different universe after this one is spent. And long before that, spaceship mechanical failures or cosmic-scale accidents could result in your destruction. And again, I'm not convinced that an infinite lifespan is a bad thing, or that you won't have a choice to end your life somehow if you do get tired of it.
As for what Christianity has to say about it, if there really was a heaven and/or hell and people went there, it seems like they don't really have a choice in the matter. Can they ask to be dusted after they reach the pearly gates? I get the impression that heaven is supposed to be like an infinite trippy experience where you are just content forever but not doing much. Like being high as a kite endlessly. As for hell, you would just get laughed at if you asked to be released from infinite torment.
But enough of the heaven/hell bullshit, the more interesting thing is to consider what will happen when anti-aging technologies hit the market. If Christians, Muslims, etc. reject the treatments as blasphemous/evil/playing god, then they will likely refuse to take them. That could hasten the end of religion as believers would die out naturally, while some of their offspring would become atheists/agnostics and probably take anti-aging treatments. Or maybe believers will just rationalize anti-aging as treatment for medical issues (cellular damage, etc.) and be content to live indefinitely. Maybe they will die violently while attacking scientists who are "playing god" with biotechnology in various ways. There are a number of ways this could go. I have a feeling that the religious will not react well to "natural" aging becoming obsolete.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 30 2018, @03:24PM (1 child)
Some Christians believing in an everlasting burning fire where people are tortured forever. The Bible teaches that the "everlasting hell fire" isn't a continual torture, but a finite end to the wicked. They will be burned and die and will be no more. They will cease to exist, they will not burn in a tortured existence for an eternity. Hell will be the Earth and the devil will be bound to the earth with no one to keep company with for a time. Then God and the people he saved will come back. The wicked dead will be raised, and Satan (aka the devil / Lucifer) will lead them in a final attack on the holy city. Then, they will be destroyed for the final time along with Satan and they will cease to exist. Satan, the fallen Angels, and all of the wicked will meet a definite end. After that, the Earth will be made new again as it was meant to be.
"The teaching that sinners are immortal in hell originated with Satan and is completely untrue." https://www.amazingfacts.org/media-library/study-guide/e/4988/t/is-the-devil-in-charge-of-hell- [amazingfacts.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 30 2018, @07:26PM
Bloody FINALLY! One of you FINALLY understands and admits that "aionios" does NOT mean "eternal" and when you get terms like "destruction from the face of the Lord" and "the second death," IT FUCKING WELL MEANS DEATH. If we ever agree on anything, it's the idea that endless torture is a demonic idea.
You're still completely wrong, but you're not evil on top of it, and for that, you have my respect. I shall call off the snipers.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...