Slashdot Mirror
More Brains Needed
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. 'For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful,' said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. 'We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.' Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. 'It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important,' says Esin. 'But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self.' Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of 'healthy' brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. 'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'"
You can have my brain when you pry it from my cold, dead...
Oh wait.
It's not that I don't want to donate my brain, it's just that I've already promised other people that I would have my brain cryogenically frozen so that I can be resurrected at some point in the future, and I'd hate to let those people down.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
When you're dead, you're dead. It's not like your brain wont be rotting in the ground anyway.
Get over the fact that the universe doesn't care about you and help science!
'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'"
Well to be honest, I have always kinda hoped that having my donor card would mean they might transplant my brain...
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm told I have shit for brains, so I'm donating mine to local gardening enthusiasts.
The main problem I have with donating body parts for scientific research is that I don't want silly medical students using bits of me to play pranks on each other!
Are you kidding?! Biohazardous pranks are hilarious! How can you not donate to that cause?!
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
What if I'm not quite certain which category I belong in?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
My mom had completed the paperwork to donate her body to the local medical school before she found out she had a rare degenerative (untreatable and invariably fatal) neuromuscular disorder. in her consultations with the neurology team at the local school, they determined that the leading research team was at another major university, so they just added that school to the paperwork to receive her brain and spinal cord. other than completing the paperwork, signing it and advising her next of kin, the process was seamless. the funeral home guys picked her up after she died and we gave them the paperwork. the university guys took it from there.
easy. and very satisfying.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
That's why I'm donating mine to 'Will it Blend?'.
Well I know lots of members of the medical profession, and I can say this is total rubbish, for 3 reasons: 1) Doctors appreciate organ doners. They know very little about you when you are rushed in, but if they know you are a doner they know something good about you. 2) There has been rumours of doctors getting in trouble for doing just what you say, and no-one wants to risk getting in trouble, so they err on the side of caution. 3) Why the heck would a doctor decide to not do an expensive operation? The hospital gets paid when they do expensive operations. I can honestly say YOU are scaremongering, and in the process possibly risking other people's lives. If you do die, getting the organs as quickly as possible is crucial, so your scaremongering could well kill people, and that makes you a shit. Sorry.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Even more despicable than trying to create fear, uncertainty and doubt of Open-Source, are people who try to do the same thing against those who would save lives... I hope you sleep well girlintraining.
A Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties -- Albert Einstein
I have a PhD and autism, so that makes me autistic but not stupid. Simon Baron-Cohen, a autism researcher, has expressed his worry that "curing" autism could reduce the number people studying maths and other professions that require good systematizing ability, a strength possessed by people with autism. Here is his comment on the BBC website...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7736196.stm
I agree that the way to discourage curing autism, at least getting people to consider its wider implications that go beyond autism, is to connect the search into a cure with the search for genes that code for personality traits.
It is known that people with Autism and Asperger's are far more likely to vote in certain political directions and express a different degree of religiosity, so we are looking at personalty traits - of all people not just autistic people - when we look for a cure. It is scary stuff, the general public does not understand the ethics or its wider implications.
I think there is a simple solution. If you don't have an organ donor card then you don't get any organs either if you need them.