Science may be catching up to some wild fiction.
The Daily Mail (UK) reports the scientists have kept alive pig brains outside of the body for the first time as part of a controversial new experiment. The radical experiments could pave the way for human brain transplants and may one day allow humans to become immortal.
The report suggests to ethics experts that any experiments to reanimate dead brains could
lead to humans being locked in an eternal "living hell" and enduring a" fate worse than death."
That's
according to Nottingham Trent ethics and philosophy lecturer Benjamin
Curtis who made the comments in light of controversial experiments on
pig brains.
"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 allow us to experience and interact with the world,' Curtis said. "In the best case scenario you would be spending your life with only your own thoughts for company.
'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."
Last month, Yale University
announced it had successfully resurrected the brains of more than 100
slaughtered pigs and kept them alive for up to 36 hours.
Scientists
said it could pave the way for brain transplants and may one day allow
humans to become immortal by hooking up our minds to artificial systems
after our natural bodies have perished.
In LOST, viewers were conflicted about who, what, where and how the main characters were interacting with each other on an island that was not an island (where the laws of physics and smoke monsters roamed). Immortality was seen through Jacob, who shipwrecked as a baby on the island during Roman times. The Man in Black appears as an immortal smoke monster savagely imposing judgment on humans. Even the character of Michael appears to be trapped as a "whisper" on the island as a soul that cannot move on in the after life.
The idea that LOST could have been merely a network of reanimated brains now has a thread of truthful basis in current science. And the nightmare of being trapped on an island hell is what Mr. Curtis alludes to in his criticism of the experiment's potential outcome.
