Researchers Are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body (technologyreview.com)

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. From a report: 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.

Comments

Pure filth and evil

[Anonymous Coward]

This type of experimentation is absolutely evil. This should not be done, even to animals. This is possibly the cruelest thing I have ever heard. Leave it to human beings to invent something that's even worse than death. Because killing isn't bad enough, we need to invent a way to put things into a literal living hell.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[sinij]

Yes, this is likely very cruel to pigs if they ever regain consciousness. Which is not given. This will also help treat trauma and organ failure patients and will save human lives.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[sinij]

Reading TFA:

Sestan says the organs produce a flat brain wave equivalent to a comatose state

So no, pig brains were not feeling. They were effectively shut down.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[SJMage]

As much as I understand your exasperation, the usage of homophobic slurs inexcusable. You don't fight against oppression by perpetuating oppression against other victimized groups.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[Oswald McWeany]

Yes, this is likely very cruel to pigs if they ever regain consciousness. Which is not given. This will also help treat trauma and organ failure patients and will save human lives.

I'm not falling for that. I saw The man with 2 brains. I learnt my lesson from that- I know where that leads. Steve Martin does make documentaries right?

Re:Pure filth and evil

[rogoshen1]

So pretend a person is in a car accident and bleeds out. A procedure like this could be done to preserve the brain while the surgeons repair the wounds..

Or while waiting on blood transfusion, or a donor organ.

Your absolutely right, this has no practical application other than pig torture and every doctor's latent desire to emulate Frankenstein.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[R3d M3rcury]

I have no mouth and I must scream.

Re:Pure filth and evil

[sheramil]

And yet when we talk about extending human lifespan or trying head swap surgery all of a sudden that's against nature and 80 years of life is enough!

I was wondering, where's that Italian surgeon whose name escapes me, who pops up every six months and announces he's going to do a head swap operation with a different rich client? As I faintly recall, the last one was some Russian oligarch with a terminal illness.

I have no mouth and I must scream?

[sl3xd]

That said, there's living tissue and functioning tissue... I'm not sure this is the latter.

Re:I have no mouth and I must scream?

[hcs_$reboot]

Hawking's brain was working pretty well.

Futurama

[Anonymous Coward]

Already covered the ethical issues of this in detail. Nixons head must not be allowed to take over again!

Re:Futurama

[Anonymous Coward]

Came for the Futurama reference; leaving satisfied.

Re:Futurama

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Nixons head must not be allowed to take over again!

Given another Clinton/Trump choice in 2020 . . . I'll vote for the third party disembodied pig head, instead.

Re:Futurama

[Mike Van Pelt]

I'd write in Cthulhu as the lesser evil.

Kramer

[XanC]

Believe me, somewhere in this hospital the anguished oink of pig-man cries out for help!

Stop making fun of POTUS!

[houghi]

Seriously. This is not funny anymore.

Re:Stop making fun of POTUS!

[ilsaloving]

What do you mean? We're talking about disembodied comatose pig brains, not.... oh.

Summary missing key detail

[Nidi62]

From TFA(and yes, turning in my slashdot card)

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.

So the brains are still dead. There is no consciousness, no functioning of the brain itself. All this really shows is something that really isn't a surprise: the brain cells don't die right away. Because the neurons are still dead, this is no different than keeping an arm or an organ alive outside the body. It might lead to some improvements with transplants, but until they can actually show renewed neuron activity in the brain, this idea is as dead as a slab of bacon.

The potential implications are staggering

[Falconnan]

Admittedly, the article suggests a comatose state. However, imagine being in this state: No sensory input from any normal sources. The potential for the final state of the body to translate into a sensation of pain from any/all possible sources. I understand the goal here, and maybe at some point this would be a viable option. However, to me, this is kind of terrifying. The animal cruelty implications aren't minor, either.

Re:The potential implications are staggering

[bigpat]

Of course the ethical point of this is serious. Even if you could achieve human brain transplant. I mean,,,,,,the other host,,,,is or was someone else,,,how do you cope with that, the family sees their love ones walking and talking but with someone else's brain, brings me to Altered Carbon sci-fi series.

Kind of really scary

Kinda really scary... but... if we can achieve some sort of economically viable cloning/body growing technology. So say growing a new body costs about the same or less than buying a new car so most people can afford it, then I think that could be on balance a good thing for society and especially for individuals whose bodies become permanently disabled well before "their time".

I think some aspect of Altered Carbon's view of a potential future are terrifying, especially if the ability to restore life in its fullest is reserved for the wealthy and a token few. We don't want to create a vampire class where the wealthy maintain their wealth and power over others simply by refusing to die while others remain poor simply because they don't live long enough to accumulate relative wealth.

If economically viable for a great number of people, then the ability to live another lifetime in a younger healthier body could really improve our existence in a variety of ways and people would always retain the option to just to live out their existing natural lifespan and be done with it.

In some scenarios it could make overpopulation worse, but society needs to adapt to the lower death rates we have already achieved with modern medicine regardless of any radical life extension that would be measured as a couple hundred years. Just random accidents and degradation of the brain itself will still cause attrition, unlike in the fictional Altered Carbon universe where it is a lot harder to die and the biological limitations of the brain are circumvented with a literary device.

Speaking for myself, I think I could go for another couple rounds of a healthy youthful life.

Re:The potential implications are staggering

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I share the same concerns about this type of research. I seem to remember another recent experiment where they grew mice with brains containing some human brain cells. It's not just animals though, what about artificial intelligences?

Since we can't enter the consciousness of something else, how can we be sure we haven't created something that exists in a state of constant agony?

Re:The potential implications are staggering

[HiThere]

That's not clear. Admittedly my first thought was "This is something new in the way of sensory deprivation!", but on further thought I'm less sure. From what I've heard, people who have recovered from being "locked in" don't report anything dreadful. They just became fuzzy and disconnected. It's as if because they weren't receiving any messages, they just didn't think. They don't seem to have been aware that time was passing.

Re:The potential implications are staggering

[drunken_boxer777]

Pain is transmitted by a specific kind of neuron called a nociceptor. If they aren't transmitting pain signals, then, if conscious, the brain would not experience pain. That doesn't mean it could relive the final moments over and over in sensory deprivation and experience mental anguish. Not pleasant however you slice it (no pun intended), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The investigator stated that there was a flat EEG, and we don't have any reason to believe a brain is "thinking" without EEG activity.

(I realize this anthropomorphizes pigs quite a bit, but the ethical concerns largely focus on translation to humans.)

Sweating

[Tablizer]

Must ... Resist ... Trump ... Jokes...

Re:Next Step: Drones

[AntronArgaiv]

No need to create complicated AI chips. Just use brains from convicts.

But, please...not "ABNORMAL" ones

Somewhere in Heaven...

[magusxxx]

Don Adams looks at Stephen Hawking and says, "Missed it by THAT much."

Re:Next Step: Drones

[HiThere]

Cordwainer Smith figured that mouse brains would suffice for many uses. But I think he cheated when letting them understand English. (OTOH, he had the sliced into thin sections and, preserved somehow, not really specified. But they didn't require lots of support equipment. This wasn't the same as his "underpeople", I think I'm remembering from "The Lady that Sailed the Soul".)

Old news, russsians did this long ago...

[Faw]

...and it was all done in the 1950s. Search for Doctor Sergei S. Bryukhonenko.

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms

Check the weird stuff in youtube.

That's amazing.

[Cryptimus]

I had a good look during the recent State of The Union and I couldn't see any mechanical devices whatsoever. They must've really cracked the miniaturization problem.