Pig Brains Kept Alive Outside Body For Hours After Death – Nature
As someone old enough to remember seeing men walk on the Moon for the first time on live television, I have always had a somewhat idealistic view of our possible future, and an early and enduring belief that Science would bring us untold benefits. Decades later we still don’t have a lunar colony or flying cars, but scientific research continues to advance – in sometimes most alarming ways. A case in point is a recent experiment in which researchers took 32 brains of pigs which had been slaughtered for food, and four hours after what was supposed to be death, managed to partially revive the disembodied brains thanks to perfusion of those brains with a, shall we say, animating elixir called BrainEx. According to conventional wisdom, this should be impossible – irreversible brain death has been thought to occur in as little as ten to twelve minutes, if cardiorespiratory functions cease – but, well, here we are.
The brains did not produce any electrical activity that would be consistent with even partial consciousness but the fact that the researchers even had to be on the lookout for the possibility, is actively alarming. Needless to say, this raises all sorts of moral and bioethical questions, and you can read more details in the coverage by Nature, which will give you some of the most cringe-inducing cocktail party conversation imaginable, just in time for the weekend.
– Jack Forster, Editor-In-Chief
from Best Watches For Men http://bit.ly/2KSyXrf