# Ethics debate as pig brains kept alive without a body



## Biskit (Apr 28, 2018)

Researchers at Yale University have restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs, and kept the organs alive for several hours.

Pig brains kept alive without a body


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## awesomesauce (Apr 28, 2018)

Part of me thinks that's super interesting. But I do get squeamish about the pigs. I'd feel better about it if they used human brains from consenting donors.


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## Alexa (May 2, 2018)

If this can help testing a new treatment for neurological disorders. those 36 hours are precious. I don't see the necessity for an ethical debate, since the pig is dead anyway.


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## Brian G Turner (May 3, 2018)

That's the thing - the brain is effectively revived. Sections of human brain are also being developed and grown in the lab - hence the need for ethical guidelines. Especially as there's the danger of lab specimens having a sentient conscious experience while being experimented on.


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## Amberlen (May 3, 2018)

ahh, but can a brain have or be a sentient conscious without a soul? i guess it depends on ones belief as to whether or not its an ethical question...


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## Edward M. Grant (May 10, 2018)

Brian G Turner said:


> That's the thing - the brain is effectively revived. Sections of human brain are also being developed and grown in the lab - hence the need for ethical guidelines.



So the experiments will then be conducted by people with no ethics in countries that don't give a damn.


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> ahh, but can a brain have or be a sentient conscious without a soul? i guess it depends on ones belief as to whether or not its an ethical question...


Are you saying that because they are pigs, or because the soul is stored in the liver?


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## night_wrtr (May 10, 2018)

article said:
			
		

> ...extend their lifespans - by transplanting their brains when their bodies wear out.


This is exactly where my thoughts went. If I remember right, there was/will be a head transplant soon? The quest for immortality continues.



Brian G Turner said:


> Especially as there's the danger of lab specimens having a sentient conscious experience while being experimented on.



I'm curious about the conscious experience with only having the use of the brain.


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

night_wrtr said:


> This is exactly where my thoughts went. If I remember right, there was/will be a head transplant soon? The quest for immortality continues.
> 
> I'm curious about the conscious experience with only having the use of the brain.


If we were anywhere close to being able to transplant a head, there would be a lot fewer paralyzed people. We can't reconnect severed spines.


I think plenty of people have experienced some form of waking coma where they are not able to feel, hear or see anything.


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## Edward M. Grant (May 10, 2018)

night_wrtr said:


> This is exactly where my thoughts went. If I remember right, there was/will be a head transplant soon? The quest for immortality continues.



The head transplant saga has been going on for a while. Many people seem to think it's a scam, but someone will do it, sooner or later.

The big question to me is whether we'll be able to hook up the spinal cord and actually have it work, or whether there's too much variation between bodies. Attaching a brain to a robot body may turn out to be easier, particularly once we have working brain-computer interfaces for VR.

Or, heck, just keep the brain in a vat and rent a drone body when you need one.


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Are you saying that because they are pigs, or because the soul is stored in the liver?


well, i wasnt really talking about pigs, but rather a human brain


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> well, i wasnt really talking about pigs, but rather a human brain


Okay. I'm asking what being decapitated but kept alive has to do with the soul. If your brain is still alive, aren't you alive?


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## Edward M. Grant (May 10, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Okay. I'm asking what being decapitated but kept alive has to do with the soul. If your brain is still alive, aren't you alive?



In the case of the pigs, I believe they were dead for some time before being 'revived' with limited brain activity. If you believe in souls, you'd have to wonder what would happen to a human brain in the same situation: the soul would presumably be long gone before the brain was revived.

Could make an interesting story, though. You're dead and off in whatever heaven you believe in,  then pulled back to a brain in a vat.


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> In the case of the pigs, I believe they were dead for some time before being 'revived' with limited brain activity. If you believe in souls, you'd have to wonder what would happen to a human brain in the same situation: the soul would presumably be long gone before the brain was revived.
> 
> Could make an interesting story, though. You're dead and off in whatever heaven you believe in,  then pulled back to a brain in a vat.


People are revived after spending long times underwater. There is likely some line to be drawn between being "brain dead" and "persistent vegetative state" and a coma/sleep/consciousness, but if the majority of the brain has electrical activity after restoring circulation, it would seem like an odd claim that the person is no longer "alive" because their soul departed in the interim.


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Okay. I'm asking what being decapitated but kept alive has to do with the soul. If your brain is still alive, aren't you alive?


no i dont think you would be if it were a dead brain, chemically or medically revived. thats my point, i dont see it being sentient...i know you probably disagree?


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

Onyx said:


> People are revived after spending long times underwater. There is likely some line to be drawn between being "brain dead" and "persistent vegetative state" and a coma/sleep/consciousness, but if the majority of the brain has electrical activity after restoring circulation, it would seem like an odd claim that the person is no longer "alive" because their soul departed in the interim.


im not talking about a drowning victim...i was under the assumption these were lab specimens, no longer attached to a body, dead for awhile brains


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> im not talking about a drowning victim...i was under the assumption these were lab specimens, no longer attached to a body, dead for awhile brains


Please explain what is the difference from being "dead" underwater for 40 minutes and being "dead" because your body was removed if blood flow is restored in both cases.

As far as I understood, I don't think a theologian would see the difference, either.


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

Onyx said:


> Please explain what is the difference from being "dead" underwater for 40 minutes and being "dead" because your body was removed if blood flow is restored in both cases.
> 
> As far as I understood, I don't think a theologian would see the difference, either.


it depends on the theologian's faith heritage..dead for 40 minutes and brought back to life isnt frozen for months or years. my priest would tell me i am sure, that once you cross over and receive final judgement, there is no coming back. youre where you are at. whether thats 10 minutes or an hour, idk, but i know its not days/months/years.plus you well know i cant really go into specifics without breaking the no religion rule. im probably already walking that line and will get a naughty sticker for the day


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## Onyx (May 10, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> it depends on the theologian's faith heritage..dead for 40 minutes and brought back to life isnt frozen for months or years. my priest would tell me i am sure, that once you cross over and receive final judgement, there is no coming back. youre where you are at. whether thats 10 minutes or an hour, idk, but i know its not days/months/years.plus you well know i cant really go into specifics without breaking the no religion rule. im probably already walking that line and will get a naughty sticker for the day


Freezing isn't really part of this. I thought we were talking about decapitation followed pretty immediately by being put on a heart/lung machine and getting brain waves back.


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

then we are misunderstanding the start point, i thought it was grown/done in a lab, etc


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## Amberlen (May 10, 2018)

and i missed decapitation..so i guess my view still stands, i think body, mind, soul are in some unfathomable way intertwined. so i dont think a decapitated persons brain could be sentient..to me theres a huge difference between that,and an intact person being revived. *shrug*


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## Onyx (May 11, 2018)

Amberlen said:


> and i missed decapitation..so i guess my view still stands, i think body, mind, soul are in some unfathomable way intertwined. so i dont think a decapitated persons brain could be sentient..to me theres a huge difference between that,and an intact person being revived. *shrug*


So if it becomes possible to do the microsurgery to transplant someone's head, and the person even remained awake during the procedure with a heart/lung machine, you would consider them as having passed through death and now soulless - even if you were talking to them the whole time?


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## Brian G Turner (May 11, 2018)

We're kind of missing the point by discussion of "the soul". The question is whether such a subject may experience pain or distress. Also, another reminder that we don't discuss issues of spirituality here, thank you.


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## Onyx (May 11, 2018)

Brian G Turner said:


> We're kind of missing the point by discussion of "the soul". The question is whether such a subject may experience pain or distress. Also, another reminder that we don't discuss issues of spirituality here, thank you.



It's a shame the article has nothing to say about how, if at all, they determined that the pigs were not conscious. Was it speculation or a PET scan that was compared to a live pig PET? Not much to consider without knowing more about the results.

Religion aside, the question of "what is death?" seems a little appropriate because of the very real possibility that a piece of donated gray matter could contain some important part of the donor's memory or personality that a living brain could access. Would such a hybrid brain reflect the consciousness of both people?


I've always wondered whether consciousness is a program running as software rather than built into the hardware, and whether cognition can ever go to zero and be restored. Interrupt it by going to zero brain activity and the pattern is lost, like turning on a computer without the boot disk. If the program of consciousness shuts down, then there is no real way to restart it by simple stimulation, and there will be no awareness.

In the case of cold water suspension, I imagine the brain doesn't ever shut down completely and a certain critical minimum of firing is maintained.

To bring this full circle, the reason I was asking these inappropriate questions about souls is to discuss whether a soul could be another way of describing that operating system actively running in RAM. (Or "ghost" in the parlance of Ghost in the Shell.)


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## dask (May 11, 2018)

Does a soul have mass?


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## Onyx (May 11, 2018)

dask said:


> Does a soul have mass?


As either the term for an information set or a supernaturally imbued quality: No.


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## Amberlen (May 11, 2018)

Onyx said:


> It's a shame the article has nothing to say about how, if at all, they determined that the pigs were not conscious. Was it speculation or a PET scan that was compared to a live pig PET? Not much to consider without knowing more about the results.
> 
> Religion aside, the question of "what is death?" seems a little appropriate because of the very real possibility that a piece of donated gray matter could contain some important part of the donor's memory or personality that a living brain could access. Would such a hybrid brain reflect the consciousness of both people?
> 
> ...



I’m out of this one my friend


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## Vertigo (May 11, 2018)

dask said:


> Does a soul have mass?


I believe the answer to that is 21g. There was even an experiment done to determine the value! 21 grams experiment - Wikipedia

I believe there are also a number of pieces of music celebrating this 'fact'.

But again we are drifting a little too close to the ethical forum boundaries here.


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## TheDustyZebra (May 11, 2018)

The brain doesn’t have pain receptors, does it? So it’s more a matter of the imagined life going on inside the brain while things are being done to it. Sort of a world of its own in there.


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## Onyx (May 11, 2018)

TheDustyZebra said:


> The brain doesn’t have pain receptors, does it? So it’s more a matter of the imagined life going on inside the brain while things are being done to it. Sort of a world of its own in there.


Have all the nerves running into that brain been blocked? The rather gaping neck wound is likely not pain-free.


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## Vertigo (May 12, 2018)

TheDustyZebra said:


> The brain doesn’t have pain receptors, does it? So it’s more a matter of the imagined life going on inside the brain while things are being done to it. Sort of a world of its own in there.


Not pain maybe but total sensory deprivation for 36 hours comes under the heading of torture in my book.


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## Phyrebrat (Jun 9, 2018)

Do it and ask the transplantee what they are. 

pH


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## awesomesauce (Jun 11, 2018)

TheDustyZebra said:


> The brain doesn’t have pain receptors, does it? So it’s more a matter of the imagined life going on inside the brain while things are being done to it. Sort of a world of its own in there.



I dunno, humans report experiencing pain sensations in amputated limbs. Why would we assume pigs don't have the same mechanism? And if the brain experiences pain, does it matter whether or not the receptors are actually connected? It seems like since the brain is the thing responsible for interpreting the signals as pain, if the brain says something hurts, you hurt, regardless of whether the thing you perceive "hurts" is still connected to your brain.


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## Onyx (Jun 11, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> I dunno, humans report experiencing pain sensations in amputated limbs. Why would we assume pigs don't have the same mechanism? And if the brain experiences pain, does it matter whether or not the receptors are actually connected? It seems like since the brain is the thing responsible for interpreting the signals as pain, if the brain says something hurts, you hurt, regardless of whether the thing you perceive "hurts" is still connected to your brain.


You could certainly prevent pain inputs from arriving at the brain, but if the brain is still in a severed head, all that neck trauma at least is going to be firing signals to the brain.

"Ghost pain" like you mention would just be another level above that, along with a level of fear no animal or person should experience.


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