
Neanderthal ‘minibrains’ grown in dish - newman8r
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/exclusive-neanderthal-minibrains-grown-dish
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King-Aaron
Obviously this is a long, long way from a functional brain being grown. But I
have to wonder where the moral line is drawn when you're talking about growing
an organ that (may-or-may-not) hold the ability to form a level of
consciousness.

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everdev
The quick answer is to say it's not ethical. But what if the brain is given
full autonomy and ability to communicate with others and then let the brain
decide if it wants an organic or machine body?

~~~
candiodari
I don't think you should be so quick to call something moral or not. Let's
take your statement and apply it to a few real life situations ...

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.

~~~
everdev
Yes abortion has serious moral questions. In that case the brain is being
grown inside another human body connected to another brain. That's a far
different moral question than a brain being grown by itself in a lab.

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.

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pickpuck
> Several of these differences mirror what Muotri has found studying neuronal
> development in the brains of children with autism. "I don't want families to
> conclude that I'm comparing autistic kids to Neanderthals, but it's an
> important observation," says Muotri, who has a stepson with autism. "In
> modern humans, these types of changes are linked to defects in brain
> development that are needed for socialization. If we believe that's one of
> our advantages over Neanderthals, it's relevant."

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TimMurnaghan
... wiring the organoids to robots ... = daleks

~~~
senectus1
dunno man... expecting a neanderthal brain to crisply repeat a four syllable
word is a bit much...

~~~
majewsky
That word may be just an audio file in the robot's memory, that is played back
when a single particular neuron fires.

~~~
jacobush
Ex-ter-mi-nate!

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himom
Future home of The Island of Doctor Moreau or a Four-Assed Monkey (s01e05).
Srsly: At some point, a sizable-enough brain develops a degree of
consciousness. Are we really going to test the mad scientist hypothesis that
your brain might be in a Petri dish somewhere and that your senses are
artificial? NM: [https://nypost.com/2015/08/19/scientist-
creates-99-complete-...](https://nypost.com/2015/08/19/scientist-
creates-99-complete-human-brain-in-lab-dish/)

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jlebrech
now all we need is to connect them to a virtual grid of sorts. some kind of
brain over silicon tech.

~~~
mikaelgyth
BAAS (Brains As A Service). Good idea, know plenty who could use it.

~~~
lioeters
One could then provision a fleet of brains as parallel processors to do
machine learning.

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wintorez
Is this ethical?

~~~
itchyjunk
Could you elaborate? What part do you find to be unethical and for what
reasons? What alternate ethical studies do you recommend to gain the same
information being gained here?

~~~
wintorez
That wasn't a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious if this is ethical or
not.

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sandworm101
>>> "We're trying to recreate Neanderthal minds," Muotri says."

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.

~~~
candiodari
How exactly do you think scientists investigate which areas of animal (and
human) brains are responsible for which functional area ?

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 ...

~~~
sandworm101
The same ways they have done in the past. Persuit of knowledge isnt a free
pass to do horrific things. We have rules and they follow them.

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.

