SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
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.
[...] Today in the journal Nature, 17 neuroscientists and bioethicists, including Sestan, published an editorial arguing that experiments on human brain tissue may require special protections and rules.
They identified three categories of "brain surrogates" that provoke new concerns. These include brain organoids (blobs of nerve tissue the size of a rice grain), human-animal chimeras (mice with human brain tissue added), and ex vivo human brain tissue (such as chunks of brain removed during surgery).
They went on to suggest a variety of ethical safety measures, such as drugging animals that possess human brain cells so they stay in a "comatose-like brain state."
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday December 28 2018, @01:59PM (3 children)
I've been struck hard by Poe's Law here! Please, for the love of all that is sentient, tell me that's intended ironically. Contextually, it certainly seems that way, but with the prevalent attitudes towards animals I have to ask.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday December 28 2018, @02:08PM (2 children)
No jokes, I'm all in. I want an aggressive pursuit of medical knowledge that we can all benefit from. I have little tolerance for whining about laboratory pigs and mice when global meat consumption is growing.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday December 28 2018, @02:25PM
That logic only works against those that are comfortable with meat consumption. I'm not.
Can you expand on what you think makes these studies "noble"? The possible future health benefits to humans are obvious but I don't accept that the abuse of another being to approach that goal is a noble or honorable pursuit. Do you think it's justified on the grounds that they're less intelligent than most humans?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 29 2018, @03:00PM
I guess you're someone who has not experienced extended hard pain. No, I'm not talking about some surgery you had when you were on a morphine drip.
There's a difference between killing an animal in 2 seconds with an electroshock and torture.
But I'm with you. In fact, we'll get there faster if we experiment on humans. Let's take convicts who are to be put to death, and instead use them for experiments - it's the same thing since they die at the end. Heil Hitler brother.