Thanks to scientists at Yale University, specific vignettes from Matt Goening’s ‘Futurama’ may be far from science fiction. In April, the scientists were able to reanimate the brains of 100 pigs that had been killed beforehand. For thirty-six hours, the swine brains were kept ‘functioning’ and has given a glimmer of hope that such a process could be replicated in primates and then humans. Enter the clips of Futurama’s ‘heads in jars’ scenes.
SciFi4Me.com It is also hoped that the procedure could be used on other organs, keeping them alive outside the body long enough to be repaired or transplanted. Daily Star reports that the dead pigs never regained consciousness, but the level of monitored brain function was enough to prove that there was some extent of cognitive awareness. Nenan Sestan, who headed up the experiment, qualified the work as something that would have “a huge impact in the medical field.”
As with many shocking medical or scientific advances comes rightful concerns about the ethics of such progress. Just because we can do something does not mean we should, say those leery of the brain reanimation procedure. Switching a brain back on after death, says Benjamin Curtis, a Nottingham Trent ethics and philosophy lecturer, would subject the patient to a “living hell”.
US Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa He said: “Even if your conscious brain were kept alive after your body had died, you would have to spend the foreseeable future as a disembodied brain in a bucket, locked away inside your own mind without access to the sense that allows us to experience and interact with the world. “In the best case scenario, you would be spending your life with only your own thoughts for company.
YouTube “Some have argued that even with a fully functional body, immortality would be tedious. With absolutely no contact to external reality it might just be a living hell. “To end up a disembodied human brain may well be to suffer a fate worse than death.”
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