Neanderthal ‘minibrains’ grown in dish
sciencemag.org
sciencemag.org
There’s also the possiblity that the distaste that a culture/era has for such things is based on the extent to which it has been raised with religious values - which typically tend to deem the work of creation to be in the domain of the divine, not the mortal. As either distance from organized religion grows, or religions adapt their values, future generations exposed to such teachings may find such things to be acceptable as long as they’re not used for “bad” purposes.
> To test his theory, he nailed his wife’s dog to a board and chopped it open while the poor thing was still alive.
https://knowledgenuts.com/2013/09/29/descartes-dissected-his...
https://www.biography.com/people/ren-descartes-37613
Not sure if the rest is credible...
That's the word the Bible uses for Eve. It means all three words, as you've mentioned. Being biblical, this form of speech is not uncommon in many European and Middle Eastern cultures and languages.
Although Descartes did vivisect animals for research purposes, I think it's safe to say that this particular account is an invention.
There are research institutions doing this to everything from fruit flies, bats, dogs to monkeys in some cases.
Hell, I even heard stories that doing it to monkeys is risky. Even smaller monkeys are smart enough to get loose, steal keys, remember access codes, cooperate, fake medical problems and they will exact revenge for what was done to cellmates. And some primates like gorillas have that, and sufficient strength to lift a small car easily.
In a way, it's even done to humans. With the caveat that researchers aren't allowed to cause the damage in a human. However a sufficient number of humans have "acquired trauma to the brain" (got shot in the head/shoot themselves in the head/otherwise manage to insert large objects into their brain and are "lucky" enough to survive), and the medical papers on that by the treating physician are disseminated and studied. Sometimes the patients are available for further testing (often they are compensated for such studies, as it leads to new treatments and even medicines). And yes, for the treatment, one of the first steps is to immobilise the head in a metal contraption. I think you can see why movements of the head are unlikely to improve matters.
Example paper in humans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16395622
Example paper in animals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29326273
Here's a non-gruesome picture of it: http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/rat-with-implant.jpg
(note that that rat still has a perforated cranial membrane with equipment keeping it perforated and will start suffering from extreme headaches in about a day, and die in weeks, from this procedure. They tend to be put down after a day or two because after that they just lie there and scream)
2001 - "Catholic Church Condemns Human Cloning" https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2001-11-26-22-catholic-6640...
1998 - Churches Condemn Plan to Clone Humans https://www.csmonitor.com/1998/0113/011398.feat.feat.2.html
I never spoke as an authority, just made some remarks.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/5098/americans-oppose-idea-huma...
You mean outside of the 1.2 billion Catholics?
Actually our entire society exists because we delegate part of our suffering to other organisms, including other humans. Be it with pollution, war, drug testing, cattling, slavery... It would be foolish to pretend to have the moral ground unless one lives a very primitive life, but I think it's important to know the implied cost of our ways. It's saner, and more honest.
As an annecdote, I recently worked on a software dedicated to study epilespy episods on mouses. The experiment induced epilespsy on the subjects. When discussing about this, the scientist handling the mouses told me not to worry because the ethics commity was making sure it was done properly. At this moment I though we, as a specy, add a dark humour touch to every thing we do.
So what you're saying is we should take anything with a brain, figure out what it's answer would be to "do you want to be alive ?" and then support that decision ?
Boy, you must hate abortion ...
(just saying that those things obviously have a brain, and every last kid on the planet will say they want to be alive, so those embryos being aborted can be easily assumed to either be conscious or at least said to be rapidly becoming conscious, and we can be likewise sure they want to be alive as well. Human embryos have functional brains 20 days after conception, which is just barely after a woman would become aware of a pregnancy, and we support abortion up to 6 months or even later, at which point a human embryo has a brain with more functional neurons than almost any animal on the planet, and more than every dog, cat, primate, dolphin)
(and just to defend this research, any research that gets us closer to being able to grow specific tissues - especially neural tissue - has the potential to alleviate the suffering of a great many people that have damaged nerves and/or brains)
But we all know how we judge morals in practice. Things that can complain get preference. Brains in jars won't complain. Nobody will ever make a picture of them showing big eyes behind bars. There will never be a scream or panic reaction available in full-color video of them. So they'll be abused, even tortured, even for very little gain. Because that's how humans judge morality ... in practice. If you believe otherwise, good luck explaining the morality of abortion.
When my rights negatively impact your rights it's a moral dilemma. In a lab though, there's no affect in another person's rights by keeping the brain alive, no host body being affected, no physical/emotional pain, no financial responsibilities and no parenting role to factor in.
That's why it seems immoral to me to create a conscious brain and then destroy it or make decisions without it's consent because it only seems like the brain's rights are bring affected. Abortion is more complex because it involves the rights of two brains.
Get the pitchforks. This scientist has gone too far. Really. I'm a totally against growing "minds" in jars. I'd be against doing this with any animal brain, let alone something functionally equivalent to human. There are ethical lines that shouldn't be crossed. The concept of a non-corporeal mind living a non-sensory existence in a jar of goo is too horrible to be allowed. This nightmare should live only in the pages of science fiction.
With humans it comes from papers describing the treatment of "brain trauma". Within animals, where the majority of research is done, depending on the animal, they just nail them to a board, or nail a board or a wire into their skull, cut out half the brain, insert some sensors, and record data in the few hours that the pain does not totally immobilise the animals, usually while making the animal perform some trick, like navigating a maze, or looking at prey, or ...
In the real world, most knowledge of human brain function has come from people with brain injuries or disorders. For anything above basic motor skills you want a subject you can talk to.