Discussion

Inside the stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones

nwah1: Is there any danger of transplanting organs into you that have genes which signal not to develop a brain? Would those genes potentially affect your actual brain?

XorNot: The short version is yes! This would be a significant concern.

johnpdoe1234: Spares (1996, HarperCollins) – ISBN 978-0002246569 Michael Marshall Smith

btwotch: Sounds a bit like "The Island" movie from 2005.

bitwize: Which in turn is a remake of Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979).

Animats: Cloning works rather well now. Here are six polo ponies, Cuartetera 01 through 06, all clones of a famous polo pony.[1] Their owner has been winning world class polo matches on these mares. They're strong and healthy and very real.[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/six-cloned-horses-he...

andrewshadura: This website is almost impossible to read. Pop-ups, "see also" blocks, lots of distractions. I wonder if the creators ever tried actually using it.

nine_k: Reader Mode helps.

XorNot: The problem here isn't the idea, it's that absolutely no one has done any useful precursor research.Discussing replacement bodies is pretty rich when spinal cord injuries prognosis is still lifelong paralysis.And if I were to extend that thought a little further: we're more likely to develop useful and less invasive rejuvenation technology then to try and do surgical body transplants because the technology you'd need to fix spinal cord injury - which is mandatory - would have a lot more overlap and applicability to in situ tissue repair anyway.

nine_k: > Discussing replacement bodies is pretty richReconnecting spinal nerves does not look impossible. But I don't see any other feasible way for people whose heads are cryogenically stored to have bodies again, except cloning a new body for them.In general, the idea of producing a body that lacks the brain but has everything else intact is very rational. Its doubtless creepiness may wane with time.I still expect that growing particular tissues and whole organs (like liver, or kidneys, or bone) will end up being a faster route to cloned organ replacement. In particular, a body takes like 20 years to grow to the "finished" state, and a separate organ could grow much faster.

sarchertech: > But I don't see any other feasible way for people whose heads are cryogenically stored to have bodies again, except cloning a new body for them.Well the first step would be to understand how to undo the damage caused by freezing. We’re arguably further away from this than we are from any other part of the process.

nathanh4903: These type of research seems to always assume that we are a ghost in a machine: the brain is what really matters, and the body is nothing more than a suit. Its exciting and terrifying that we may soon have empirical data on the mind-body problem.

babblingfish: I don't think this idea could work. There's this common misconception that our brains control our bodies, like how software can control hardware. The fact is that our brains are intrinsically connected to the rest of our body: via the central nervous system, sensory, and motor neurons. You can't just swap out our brains. It's integrated with the rest of our body in a fundamental way. If you cloned someone, the neuronal connections between the CNS and organs would not be the same, because these interconnections develop over a lifetime and are not predetermined at birth.It also feels super unethical to me. Reminds me of "Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro.

danielodievich: I was about to post the same thing. Except here someone wants that minus brain? good luck. I recently saw someone watching The Island on the airplane recently and remembered being reasonably well entertained by that movie. Obi-wan was sure having fun riding a motorcycle in it.

torginus: Sedentary patients have tons of health trouble from lying in bed constantly, I'm not sure if its possible to grow a healthy human that doesn't move about.

meindnoch: >But I don't see any other feasible way for people whose heads are cryogenically stored to have bodies again, except cloning a new body for them.https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/jadensadventures/images/0/...

torginus: It's interesting to see how the spots on these horses look different. I thought it was chimerism like in cows, but apparently it's extremely rare in horses, but still there are epigenetic factors in play.I wonder how much gene expression differs in clones of particular species raised in similar environments, I would expect the amount of difference between genetically identical individuals to differ by species, but I have no idea by how much, and how would humans rate on this measure.

moffers: It’s good to know that the ethical line is some amount of human brain cells. Not too much, not too little. The perfect, ethical amount.

anigbrowl: Every time I hear about a tech firm trying to implement some dystopian/nightmarish sci-vision, I think of Tobias from Arrested Development saing '...but it might work for us.'

api: If it’s truly brainless then I don’t see a major ethical problem. But I also don’t see people being allowed to do this because it’s much too far past the “yuck” threshold. It’s gross and disturbing even if technically it is ethical.I also think it would be way harder to do this than it sounds. The body would not develop properly past the fetal stage without some kind of artificial stimulation.Printing organs is probably both more likely to work and more likely to be accepted.

throwway120385: I'm mentally reading all of the quotes from this guy in the voice of Walter from Fringe.The thing about this research is that it's A) completely unhinged, and B) if it pans out it's going to be yet another path for people to accumulate wealth for the rest of their lives. Also if it works eventually the world will come to be ruled by the severely brain-damaged clones of whichever billionaires survived this process, or their children.Behold the future of meat.

drivingmenuts: I read that while listening to the soundtrack for Fringe.

nine_k: Go no farther than Futurama! Its very first episode sort of tackles the issue.

nine_k: I suppose we can postpone this problem for another 100 years.

jostmey: I am assuming the proposal is to knockout the gene Lim1, which in other animals, creates a brainless phenotype. You won't be able to swap the brain into this headless body (assuming it can fully develop), but this approach could be used for medical research and potentially solve the problem of organ donors, assuming it is ethicalAlso, just because Lem1 creates a headless mouse doesn't mean it will do the same in Humans. But I suppose that's what the primate testing will reveal

radarsat1: Consider also that even reattaching nerves that are supposed to be there is not exactly a walk in the park. Look into finger reattachment surgery and post operation care. Think pain, tingling, a year or more of physiotherapy.. and that's in the best case that it actually works and you don't end up with a "dead" finger. Now, imagine that for your whole body.

Metacelsus: Interestingly, in "The Island" Dr. Merrick pitched investors on growing brainless clones, but actually kept the brains in, because it worked better (and gave him a labor supply).

Metacelsus: Anecephaly is a thing. Though those babies don't survive much past birth.

wiradikusuma: Sounds like Altered Carbon (tv series).

autarch: Except Altered Carbon mostly waves the real difficulty away by talking about something like "downloading" a mind into a body.I don't remember there being anything about growing replacement clones, but it would make sense given the other tech in the story.

Aboutplants: Well there are cloned humans now…