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The Ethical Issues Surrounding OSU's Lab-Grown Brains
TheAlexKnapp writes: Last month, researchers at Ohio State University announced they'd created a "a nearly complete human brain in a dish that equals the brain maturity of a 5-week-old fetus." In the press release, the University hailed this as an "ethical" way to test drugs for neurological disorders. Philosopher Janet Stemwedel, who notes that she works in "the field where we've been thinking about brains in vats for a very long time" highlights some of the ethical issues around this new technology. "We should acknowledge," she says. "that the ethical use of lab-grown human brains is nothing like a no-brainer."
You are supposed to create headless bodies to perform experiments on and harvest organs from.
Extra points if they're in topless bars.
... I much prefer free range brains. These GMO brains contain too many death-threatening chemical properties. The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning alive because of my diet.
I am tired of Religious beliefs dictating Ethics. This is especially true for stem-cell research.
An embryo can grow into a human given the right conditions, namely being carried to term by the host.
A zygote can grow into a human given the right conditions, namely attaching to uterues and being carried to term by the host
An egg can do the same given the right conditions, namely getting fertilized and then attaching to uterues and being carried to term by the host.
None of them is a human being despite your Religious convictions.
So, you'd turn Congress from a bunch of bodies that lack brains to a bunch of brains that lack bodies?
Folks have no problem sucking out a baby from the womb, a for real small person that can develop into the next Slashdoter, cutting its face open and extracting the brain. But growing a brain in a vat gives them pause?
How fucking backwards is that?
So, at what magical point does it become a problem?
Life begins at erection.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Why? The general public is stupid. The general public shouldn't have any say in anything.
> Umm, nobody remembers being 4 as well
I remember being 2. I have 2 distinct memories. Being wheeled into an operating room while my mom calls out that we will get Taco Bell after I get out and when my father was assembling a spring rocking horse. My memory is terrible today, yet I retained those all these years. Who the fuck doesn't have memories from being 4?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I do have to agree with you, there; I have plenty of memories from 1-2 years of age. For me they aren't as clear as memories from the latter years, they lack detail and are very short ones, but still. I haven't talked to too many people about so early memories, but such things have come up every now and then in conversations and I'm under the impression that most people do have memories from about 2 years of age onwards.
You're actually an oddity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia our brains are not typically developed enough for long term memories at that age.
At some point the question has to be examined, "for what reason do we live our lives, and what are good ways to live?" Sparta is an example of a way to make life miserable, it is not and never was a good model.
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In other news, the brain has announced its candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and is currently polling at 21% of likely voters.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Being a "biologically human (having human DNA)" is completely irrelevant. Skin cells have human DNA and are in the genetic sense "human". The more important sense of the word "human" is "personhood". Skin cells are not "people". Brain dead people are not even "people". Intelligent aliens (despite not having human DNA) are probably "people". Artificial intelligence (not having any DNA at all) when it happens will be "people".
Pro life people commonly use this equivocation. "Zygotes are human (genetic sense), and we protect human (personhood sense) life, so we should protect the life of zygotes."
Even the phrase "Life begins at conception" implies that "life" (i.e. the state of being alive) is what matters. Obviously a zygote is "alive". All cells that are not dead, are alive. But a cell is clearly not a person. Many cells such as zygotes, sperm, ova, etc have the potential to develop into a person, but most won't.
Careful. When you decide to start making decisions on who is and who isn't human then you go down the same path as Hitler. It's easy to just declare someone you don't like as nonhuman.
Dramatic events have a better chance of being remembered. A mechanism not suggested in your citation is the repeated remembering of an event causing that memory to be transferred from one form of storage to another.
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Are HeLa cells human?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So when are we going to see the show about zombies coming out of hiding now that they have an artificial source of nourishment, and their various sexy adventures?
So long as there are laws around homicide, the state needs to define when life begins. But our secular legal code needs a secular definition of life, not the one that Christian moralists extract from Catholic canon law.
Since we legally define life as ending with brain death, why not the beginning of brain activity as the start of life? That would be at about six weeks term.
so people that are not "perfect" or have some minor disability, do not get to live.
No, because they aren't people yet. They are potential people just like the billions of sperm I will produce in my life. There are already countless "perfect" potential humans that don't get to become people either. This is just the way biology works.
My define personhood at conception? Why not define sperms and ova to be people as well? They also have the potential to become people.
You could even do genocide by embryo selection.
It's not genocide (because it's not murder). It's a broader category eugenics (one type of which is genocide). But you are also practicing eugenics by choosing to only start a family with an attractive partner. Think of all the other babies that could have been born with uglier partners, whose existence you are denying.