I can see rare and extreme medical uses for this. Potentially lifesaving if something in the body threatens the brain, and it’s something that can be repaired, but you don’t have time because of potential brain damage.
Also, I’ve been cursed with a weird nervous system so maybe they can give me a robot body in the future
Well for one, I doubt it was panicking since it was asleep.
For two, I’d imagine they reconnected the blood vessels and then the pig was perfectly fine aside from scarring.
Had you read the article, as previously mentioned, you would know point 1 and be able to imply point 2
Edit: article was possibly edited, I’m 95% sure it stated the pig was unconscious. As commented below, there is reason to believe they did not bother to fix the pigs afterwards.
Where did they say that the pig was fine after the experiment?
What makes you think those 2 things?
You’re assuming things that aren’t explicitly stated. For me, even if your conditions are met, the experiment is still disgusting. Would you allow them to do it to you? No? Why not? So why is it acceptable to pull that shit on a other sentient being?
I’m convinced the article was edited, I definitely remember it saying they were asleep when I read it previously.
They didn’t state the pig was fine, but they did state that the experiment could’ve continued. And since all they did was remove natural blood flow, all they would have to do is restore natural blood flow. Hence why I thought that.
As for your final point, no, in it’s current state I would not accept this procedure, however now that it has been tested and confirmed to work I don’t see any harm in allowing them to do it to me. I also plan to sign up for neuralink as soon as it’s commercially available.
Do I think they should be doing this? No. Do I think that hooking a pig up to an artificial heart is as horrific as people are making it out be? No.
The way the article said they disconnected it after 5 hours, having already shut off all natural blood flow to the brain, and considering that it seems that the brain was completely disconnected from all bodily input as one of the variables of the experiment, I honestly believe all of those pigs died at the end.
They did not say the pigs were asleep in the article, they said that brain function was seen to be mostly normal. I hope that means that, disconnected from all input, the brain was unable to experience conscious panic, but my spidey sense tells me that probably isn’t the case.
Horrific experiment that hopefully yields very useful results and doesn’t need to be repeated. With any luck, one of the benefits of AI may be modeling things like this so we don’t have to do it for real.
One of the most faithful adaptations is the 2004 two-episode miniseries (streaming now on Peacock) starring Alec Newman as the good doctor and Luke Goss as the Creature.
Kinda horrifying but also makes me hope things like this lead to advances in medicine that can allow sci fi shit like a totally body transplant or being able to take the brain out, work on it like a car engine and pop it back in
But what is animal consciousness in terms of being self-aware? Pigs are damn smart, but I’m not sure they’re on the list of animals that exhibit self-awareness.
Also, the article merely states that blood flow to the brain was interrupted, not that the head was removed, which, I’m guessing, is why brain activity was largely unchanged.
If the head was still attached to the spine, then I would assume that all the nerves were still functioning normally. As normal as they would in an anesthetized pig that is, with no interference from outside stimulus. In this study, the animal was quietly sleeping. I can’t imagine any reputable doctor of science today doing such a thing to a conscious animal or human.
And, in one of the linked articles, it talks about how this research can further work on better life saving techniques for humans by developing much better blood and oxygen machines used during complicated surgeries.
So long as the animal is treated respectfully, I have no issue in using animals for research that help human medicine.
I might have let my imagination run a bit rampant there, for some reason I was thinking of a completely detached brain. but what you said makes more sense.
As far as animal consciousness is concerned, the consensus now seems to be that many animals have some kind of consciousness, including non-mammals such as birds. e.g. fcmconference.org/…/CambridgeDeclarationOnConscio…
I’m sure this won’t lead to a matrix-style utilization of brains to be a giant literal neural network (lol Duracell batteries) in an apocalyptic future…
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