alt.hn

5/20/2026 at 7:38:25 PM

Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing

 https://www.science.org/content/article/not-alive-not-dead-disembodied-human-brains-used-drug-testing

by Timofeibu

5/20/2026 at 8:48:30 PM

Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?

by aetherspawn

5/20/2026 at 10:20:41 PM

When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment.

⸻

1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me because I was shaking too much for them to operate so I was unconscious for the whole thing.

by dhosek

5/20/2026 at 10:49:58 PM

Purely anecdotal, but I had surgery a few years ago (relatively minor). But I could feel for months after a sort of 'unconscious PSTD' I don't know how else to describe it. Even after it was healed and the pain was gone, there was just a deep sense of 'something bad happened in there' feeling. I'd have dreams of someone digging around in my body. Anyway, it's all gone now, but a weird experience for sure.

by yoyohello13

5/21/2026 at 12:15:15 AM

I have vivid dreams and smells from a surgery where the visions and feeling of them poking me are incredibly intense. The question is whether it’s a memory or a manifestation of fear. I rarely dream (every few years), but this vivid dream comes through on occasion.

by _factor

5/20/2026 at 10:51:42 PM

I had the same thoughts "but won't i feel it THEN?" when I was getting an upper endoscopy. The anesthesiologist said you're in such a trance, dreamlike state plus with the inability to form memories its like you're not your real "consciousness" but something different. Sort of like your brain is in "limp mode" and its not really _you._ This was both comforting and slightly terrifying in a different way.

by VectorLock

5/21/2026 at 5:06:48 PM

I do remember my lung biopsy where they went in down my neck. Maybe they give less drugs for that than for your upper endoscopy. My memories have a slightly horror movie vibe but I would not be put off having the procedure again.

by harvey9

5/20/2026 at 11:23:01 PM

Obviously it would be worse if you remembered it, but the trauma is still there even if you don't. Ask Bill Cosby's victims.

by TurdF3rguson

5/21/2026 at 11:24:19 AM

Oh apparently from downvotes, some people here would prefer to remember being raped by Bill Cosby. Well I hope I get what you wish for, lol.

People will downvote anything, SMH.

by TurdF3rguson

5/20/2026 at 11:33:29 PM

I had a dentist explain to me the same for getting my wisdom teeth out, as if it was a selling feature. At least for me, having my memory wiped is far more scary than just being put unconscious (or having some pain and a local anaesthetic).

by andy99

5/21/2026 at 3:47:10 AM

I was one of the last if not the last patient the dentist who took out my wisdom teeth gave general anesthesia to (at my request, he was normally only doing local). Afterwards, the whole dental office staff (and my mother!) entertained themselves with having conversations with my incoherent self as I came out of the anesthesia. Apparently, I declared that I was ruined and would never be able to sing opera again (point in fact, I had never sang opera before).

by dhosek

5/21/2026 at 2:57:11 AM

A colleague warned me of the same when I was having my wisdom teeth removed. As a result, while I was being put under, I was very focused on the effects of the anaesthetic. I feel about as confident as one can be that I was completely unconscious during the entire operation. I remember the surgeon asking me to count to ten, and the specific feeling of my vision melting and swirling around, before suddenly waking up with the surgery over.

When I wake up from dreams, even with no memory of them, I sometimes have "a memory of a memory"; the tip-of-tge-tongue feeling that there's something interesting I'd experienced, but which I now can't remember what it was. But with the anaesthetic, there wasn't anything like that at all.

by mitthrowaway2

5/21/2026 at 9:09:05 AM

Similar for me, although I did not realise I had gone under. I counted to ten, and when I reached ten I opened my eyes and was in a different room and the surgery was over. Very weird!

by MattPalmer1086

5/21/2026 at 3:55:33 AM

Had a few eye surgeries (vitrectomies) under sedation, no pain but lots of flashing lights and lots of kaleidoscope patterns. It was pretty wild.

I was lucky that coming out of sedation was actually fantastic, like the only time I can remember feeling that blissfully relaxed was in maybe a few beach holidays I went on as a kid.

General anaesthetic scares me way more.

by Fr0styMatt88

5/21/2026 at 1:06:27 PM

Oh yeah, I've had two cath lab visits. In both of them, I woke up in the middle of the process, conscious enough to recognize that the black-and-white image on the screen was me with a wire in my heart and little puffs of dye.

The first time it happened, I was fascinated watching the process. I thought I asked them a question about what I was seeing. I probably was just mumbling. The second time, I had a bright white ball of nuclear fire in my chest, and in my mind's eye, my ribs were slumping under the heat. I tried to tell them about the burning sensation, and I apologized for complaining (one should always be polite to the doctor running a wire through one's arteries and into one's heart).

In both cases, after I tried to speak, the room went black again.

As I relate the story, I can see how, for some people, it would be nightmare fuel. But for me it was this abstract "hey, that's cool."

by rickydroll

5/21/2026 at 2:52:32 PM

I'm in the UK and was intentionally kept conscious during angioplasty and stent placement. Mind you, it was an emergency heart-attack kind of appointment! The experience was very cool and I recall that the wire-wriggling cardiologist wore a sectional lead suit (rapidly firing X-ray machine) and to my drug-addled brain, reminded me of the armored gorillas in the Planet of the Apes movies.

by talwyn

5/21/2026 at 3:17:21 PM

I had a low stakes cyst removal from my butt crack once. Sparing the other details, the anesthesiologist explained the different drugs, one to numb, one to prevent my memory from forming. I asked if they could leave out the memory drug and I could remain cognizant. She didn't mind and I had a nice chat with her about anesthetics while on my stomach having doctors cut out part of my butt.

by retrochameleon

5/20/2026 at 10:41:25 PM

> so I was unconscious for the whole thing

Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.

by thih9

5/21/2026 at 4:15:45 AM

The doctor who did the surgery was arguably the best doctor I’ve ever interacted with in my 57 years of life. He was horrible at starting appointments on time (much to the frustration of his staff) because he would spend as long as he felt necessary with each patient, regardless of what the scheduled appointment length was. He was essentially at war with insurance companies about coverage limitations (for the procedure, a stapedectomy, insurance companies wanted to have this be an outpatient procedure but he felt it was better for patients not to have to be in a car immediately after surgery so he informed patients beforehand that they would be checking in as an outpatient and he would declare complications after surgery that required an overnight hospital stay. Similarly, the antibiotic that the insurance companies had as their preferred formulary had a tendency to kill hair cells which made it a bad choice for in-ear application. All of his patients were advised that they had an allergy to this antibiotic and thus would have to be prescribed his preferred antibiotic). So, with this doctor, if he told me that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe him without reservation.

by dhosek

5/20/2026 at 11:50:39 PM

> the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it

The short story "Transition Dreams" by Greg Egan touches on this concept

by Gooblebrai

5/21/2026 at 1:01:44 AM

I can strongly recommend reading... anything else by Egan, just not that one.

It's not that it's bad. The problem's the opposite: He poses an existentially dreadful question which I can't definitively answer with 'no'.

by Filligree

5/21/2026 at 7:57:03 AM

That's what I love about this short in particular. Existential Sci-Fi!

by Gooblebrai

5/21/2026 at 3:39:38 AM

Colonoscopies used to be like this in the US more often (“you’ll be awake but won’t remember it”). I feel bad for the me that existed in that time window of discomfort. 20 years later they did general anesthesia (family history of colon cancer).

by steve-atx-7600

5/21/2026 at 6:46:56 PM

I've thought a lot about this. If you experience immense pain for half a second, then immediately forget, it doesn't seem so bad. And anything bad that has happened to you that you completely forgot doesn't really affect you. Sometimes when I'm feeling ill, I'll think to myself, "If I remember having this thought, then this sickness is terrible, but if I forget the whole experience, it isn't. If I eventually forget this happened, then this current pain is not real." Then when I remember that, I know that moment in time contributed to my total self. But surely I have also thought this without remembering it.

Does a full day of torture, completely forgotten, really matter? How long before it does matter? We forget vast amounts of our lives constantly. And after death, forgetting everything, how much mattered then? It's a mindfuck.

by eudamoniac

5/21/2026 at 7:23:50 PM

It wouldn't matter even if you remembered it, if it wasn't for PTSD. That and the waste of a day.

The last question is strange, it implies that the goal of life is to fill up a trophy cabinet with golden memories and then, I guess, relish them for eternity, rather than to do things.

by card_zero

5/21/2026 at 6:49:21 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

5/21/2026 at 6:24:33 AM

...or that's what they told you afterward 0_0

by WithinReason

5/20/2026 at 8:56:36 PM

From the article:

> The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures.

by garethsprice

5/20/2026 at 9:15:19 PM

I recognized that anesthetic from its famous irresponsible use-

"Attention to the risks of off-label use of propofol increased in August 2009, after the release of the Los Angeles County coroner's report that musician Michael Jackson was killed by a mixture of propofol and the benzodiazepine drugs lorazepam, midazolam, and diazepam on 25 June 2009." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol

Used properly, however:

"To induce general anesthesia, propofol is the drug used almost exclusively, having largely replaced sodium thiopental."

by Barbing

5/20/2026 at 9:31:54 PM

Apparently MJ was taking propofol to sleep, which another commenter said was akin to "getting a haircut by undergoing chemo".

by stavros

5/20/2026 at 9:35:51 PM

Between what he did to children, and what his parents did to him, it's hard to really blame the guy for having extreme sleep problems though.

by hungryhobbit

5/20/2026 at 9:45:57 PM

> what he did to children

The media and the people who bought into their shameless attention-grabbing lies are the reason he had sleep problems. He was unanimously acquitted of all counts, but the media made his life into a living hell by consistently portraying him as a pedophile because it drove incredible engagement numbers. A justice system should be "innocent until proven guilty", and yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent. Longform read from an actually good journalist, if you care to learn for yourself: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/one-of-the-most-shameful_b_61...

by applfanboysbgon

5/20/2026 at 11:37:49 PM

That article was written 16 years ago and misses a lot as a result. it doesn’t mention the new allegations, including those documented in Leaving Neverland. It also glosses over the accusations in the 1990s. It’s papered over that those allegations were lies, but he settled the lawsuit with them for over $23M.

by openasocket

5/20/2026 at 11:47:14 PM

Settling isn't an admission of guilt. It's plausible that he wanted to avoid the media circus that would inevitably result, and given that fighting it out in court was significantly more damaging to his reputation than settling the 90s case was despite being exonerated, he was probably right to settle. The article does also touch on the indications that those allegations were also not credible, although it doesn't do a deep dive.

I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive, and why are people still publishing documentaries? You don't need a documentary to make an allegation. They're doing it because they want to make money, then. Off a dead man, who can't defend himself.

by applfanboysbgon

5/21/2026 at 5:50:33 AM

This seems pretty damning:

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/michael-jacksons-biopi...:

> Over the years, Jackson and the estate have paid out millions to settle various claims, with some lawsuits still pending without ever admitting wrongdoing. A significant reason for the large settlement totaling about $25 million made by Jackson in 1994 to the Chandler family and their lawyer was the drawing of specific markings Jackson had on his penis caused by the skin condition vitiligo.

> Jordie Chandler drew the markings and the drawing was put into a sealed envelope. During the criminal investigation, Jackson was so resistant to having his genitals photographed that he slapped one of his doctors. It didn’t matter for the civil suit. My reporting showed that when Jordie’s drawing was unsealed, it matched the photos.

by palmotea

5/21/2026 at 7:45:37 AM

That poor kid

by Barbing

5/21/2026 at 1:30:19 AM

> I don't give much credence to new allegations. Where were these allegations when he was alive

It’s worth noting that it’s common for it to take years or decades for victims to speak out against an abuser. Especially when the victims are children. Especially when the abuser is a prominent figure, like the literal King of Pop.

I’m not going to try and convince you that these allegations are credible (though I believe they are), I just want you to think about how a child victim might behave in that situation. There’s almost never any objective evidence or 3rd party witnesses of abuse. It’s almost always the word of one person against another. And it may be years before a child victim even fully understands what was happening, and years beyond that to come to terms with it.

by openasocket

5/21/2026 at 3:10:18 AM

The most recent allegations are from the Cascios. Frank Cascio turned 18 in 1999. He would have been 30 by 2011, when he was writing a book and in the media defending Michael. He tried to get the book turned into a documentary, but when that fell through, he instead extorted Jackson's estate for millions of dollars by threatening to make public allegations, and then did it anyways despite being paid off, allegedly after trying to extort the estate again for $200 million.

Another big allegation is from Wade Robson, who has turned the accusations into two documentaries. Wade Robson was 25 years old when, in 2005, he testified under oath that Jackson had never abused him as one of the witnesses called by the defense. He is now suing the Jackson estate for $400 million.

It's not like I can't imagine a child victim growing up and taking time to come to terms with abuse, but these people were actively defending him as fully mature adults, only to suddenly turrn on his estate for some reason. I see a pattern in the accusations, and that pattern is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

by applfanboysbgon

5/21/2026 at 1:42:17 AM

> yet MJ was deemed guilty even after proven innocent.

He was not “proven innocent”; that’s not how the legal system works. He was “found not guilty” which is a much lower standard than “proven innocent”.

(OJ Simpson was similarly found not guilty; do you think he was also “proven innocent”?)

by sokoloff

5/21/2026 at 2:52:23 AM

I am aware. Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though. "Deemed guilty even after found not guilty" just doesn't really work. I even knew I was going to get a reply about OJ when I wrote it. Miscarriages of justice certainly do happen, but still we should broadly presume innocence until proven guilty, and none of the evidence or testimony in MJ's case came close to being as compelling as OJ's, nor was there any indication that the jury was making a political statement by acquitting.

by applfanboysbgon

5/21/2026 at 4:13:14 AM

> Being pedantically correct would ruin the intended rhetorical point of reversing the standard phrase, though

Maybe it's a sign

by appletrotter

5/20/2026 at 10:12:55 PM

I mean, he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious and the degeneracy of parents to allow their children to spend the night in the bed of a grown man is not really good for society.

by iwontberude

5/20/2026 at 10:51:31 PM

"he may have never done a sexual thing but his pedophilia was quite obvious"

How is it obvious pedophilia, if you say he may have never done a sexual thing to them?

by lukan

5/20/2026 at 11:04:36 PM

because he paid families to sleep in beds and hang out with their children, this is not a normal adult man behavior, and defending it on the internet is weird.

by hilariously

5/20/2026 at 11:12:02 PM

It is not normal adult behavior and he likely should have had therapy.

But it is not necessarily pedophilia. Because that means wanting to have sex with children.

The explanation I heard is he wanted to be close to children to compensate for his own lack of innocent childhood. Children don't do sexual intercourse. Now if he was a child in his mind, then I as a parent would surely not have gave my children to his care, but this is still something very different from child molesting.

by lukan

5/20/2026 at 11:06:09 PM

There is a wide, wide range between "normal behaviour" and "sex offender". I'm fine with being weird, and have no qualms defending the right of other people to be weird.

Maybe he liked playing with children because adults are evil and only saw him as a moneybag to try to extricate a payday from. If he wasn't harming them, it's not my business.

by applfanboysbgon

5/20/2026 at 10:56:42 PM

And you know this because of your firsthand experience observing it... or because the media told you so? Considering how readily the media is willing to lie for engagement, the truth is more likely to be the opposite of what they report.

by jp_sc

5/20/2026 at 10:46:11 PM

According to you. (And me, but just saying, society is a big place to be homogenized)

by jvanderbot

5/20/2026 at 9:48:46 PM

It's not only not been proven, but the island man stuff and testimony of people like Culkin suggest he actually did the opposite of doing bad things to children and was most likely a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race.

At the very least drop an "allegedly" or something to make it sound a little tasteful.

by falsaberN1

5/21/2026 at 8:16:55 PM

> a scapegoat for the "elites" of Hollywood because of his race

Never connected Jackson to e.g. Weinstein - if allegation’s true that’s a horrible thing

by Barbing

5/20/2026 at 10:28:03 PM

oh, look, seems like we found the guy who can define what consciousness is! and not just that ... he even knows the lower boundary of it, too.

by raffael_de

5/20/2026 at 10:33:03 PM

I think there is worlds between definitely defining what consciousness is, and what are some of the scenarios and conditions under which consciousness cannot ever happen.

And on top of that, they put a sedative, just in case.

by trklausss

5/20/2026 at 10:37:11 PM

my comment was meant a little bit humorous.

by raffael_de

5/20/2026 at 10:58:13 PM

I don't trust them to always give the brain propofol. The subject has no way of reacting because they have no body, so what are they going to do?

by joegibbs

5/21/2026 at 1:06:24 AM

Towards the end of the article: "the company plans to eventually remove the anesthesia from some brain slices"

Here's hoping the idea is that the slices will be really small, or something, because frankly the whole thing is utterly horrifying enough as-is.

by BalinKing

5/20/2026 at 9:12:29 PM

I could've done without reading the word almost

by 1234letshaveatw

5/20/2026 at 9:24:43 PM

That's before they apply the anaesthetic.

by pavel_lishin

5/20/2026 at 9:17:19 PM

[flagged]

by hypfer

5/20/2026 at 10:39:28 PM

> I think it is safe to say that those brains are having a blast

How could you possibly say that? You are positing that the brains are both conscious and happy. Both of those are leaps.

> It just invokes a strong emotional response because it's so "abnormal"

You are making an assumption about why people find this horrifying, and the assumption you made was uncharitable.

> OTOH, this is HN, I guess. Having empathy for real people would be harmful to the business model of most people's employers.

I do not see how people on HN being horrified by human brain experiments means they do not have empathy.

by wewtyflakes

5/20/2026 at 9:11:07 PM

> Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental.

There’s no such thing as live dissection. It’s vivisection.

by koolba

5/21/2026 at 12:37:01 PM

To add to the discussion in the comments:

There is also the practice of not using anesthesia on infants when undergoing medical surgery.

Anesthesia is hard to do even on adults, harder on children, and very difficult on infants. Not accidentally killing one is quite hard.

So, for a long time we just didn't. I think some countries still don't, but can't remember.

The idea really gets back all the way to philosophy. If you can't remember if you were in pain, did you get hurt? And then you add in the medical problem itself, the duty to do no harm, the difficulties, etc. The conclusion was to just not use pain meds.

by Balgair

5/20/2026 at 8:56:03 PM

Well, we know how to make living brains insensate - that's who we all make it through surgery.

Presumably they're doing something similar - or using some other well-understood mechanism - to ensure that's not the case.

> The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures. Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.

by pavel_lishin

5/20/2026 at 9:10:55 PM

That’s somewhat overstated.

We know anesthesia "works," and we know some of its molecular targets, but we do not fully know the mechanism by which it produces unconsciousness, ie whether anesthesia eliminates experience, or mainly blocks memory, report, and integrated neural processing.

by gavmor

5/20/2026 at 11:57:35 PM

The most important thing to know about anesthesia in the context of OP is that it often doesn't work. 'Anesthesia awareness' is real and probably more common than we think because anesthesia can easily produce awareness but block memory formation.

Keep that in mind when they make arguments about propofol... Which is one of the drugs mentioned in https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-... and https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/neuroscience/pain/anesthesi...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120411063647/http://squid314.l...

"What did the doctor say? He told me that they couldn’t up the anesthetic because an overdose could cause respiratory arrest, and that it wouldn’t matter because the anaesthetic on any dose caused severe short term memory loss and whatever happened the patient would forget all about it. The second point, at least, was right on. One patient spent the entire procedure writhing in agony and screaming something incoherent to God. The doctor finished the procedure, took out the endoscope, and cut off the anesthetic, and the patient turned his head, looked the doctor right in the eye, smiled, and said, laughing “Wow, that wasn’t bad at all! Guess I slept right through it!”"

by gwern

5/20/2026 at 10:03:15 PM

Anesthesia appears to be a fairly broad effect - anaesthetics work on plants, for example [1], even though they lack any neural tissue whatsoever. It would be extremely surprising if those effects were also targeted enough to halt only some types of brain activity.

[1]: e.g. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886

by duskwuff

5/20/2026 at 9:57:12 PM

My understanding was that we now believe that patients under anesthesia are often "awake" but the drugs prevent them from forming memories so they can't complain once the anesthesia wears off.

Is that incorrect?

by harimau777

5/20/2026 at 10:29:59 PM

"Anesthesia" is a wider umbrella term than most people realize with many levels of sedation.

Under "general anesthesia", the patient is completely unconscious. They don't respond to any stimuli. In rare cases, some patients may have an adverse reaction and still retain some sensation, but that's very uncommon. My understanding is that we are certain that patients are actually unconscious (and not just unable to respond) because none of the other involuntary responses to trauma occur during surgery: elevated heart rate, etc. In short, you are simply not there for a while. This is what you get for most kinds of significant surgeries unless the surgery requires you to be awake (like brain surgery where they may need to ask you questions).

"Sedation" or "twilight sedation" is a lower level of anesthesia. You are somewhat conscious and can respond to commands from the doctor. But you are unable to form memories of what's happening and you're usually on something like fentanyl that makes you entirely OK with whatever it is they are doing to you. This is common for procedures like colonoscopies and endoscopies where the procedure is somewhat uncomfortable but where you aren't being cut open.

In general, anesthesiologists are trying to balance the goal of patient comfort against the risks of deeper levels of sedation.

by munificent

5/20/2026 at 10:26:17 PM

More like very rarely (1-2 per 1000), very partially aware. I could not find anything saying that it was common, and it appears cases of actual awareness to the point of having pain / trauma are far rarer still. People who have this tend to have foggy memories or other concrete PTSD symptoms after the fact. It does not appear to be the norm.

I still think this experimentation is absolutely insane and I strongly object because there is no way to get feedback from the "patient" after the fact. Since we have no real idea of what is happening, I believe we should err on the side of caution. "But they could consent beforehand" is not morally acceptable for intrinsically inhumane actions that take away fundamental human rights and dignity. So if you think this is possibly inhumane / potentially torture, it is an irrelevant point since true consent would be impossible.

by sgc

5/20/2026 at 10:26:31 PM

That's how twilight anesthesia works. That's the kind you get when having something like wisdom tooth removal or an endoscopy. They want you to be responsive to instructions but completely relaxed and unable to form memories of the event.

by ziml77

5/21/2026 at 3:18:22 AM

This, exactly.

Every other part of the human body is understandable but the brain.

Reading the article and imagining its you, sheeeeesh. I really wonder how this passed ethical review. Yes the brain is an organ, and yes there’s probably consent and the body is officially proclaimed dead and this is near the best way to really extrapolate the empirical data prior to alive human trials.

But damn this article is a combination of words I did not want to read today nor imagine.

by rootsudo

5/20/2026 at 10:11:48 PM

It's still an open debate whether the seat of consciousness (or even simpler, perception) is the brain.

see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body.

see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory

by rendx

5/20/2026 at 10:35:16 PM

Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.

by ywain

5/20/2026 at 10:45:53 PM

You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness.

I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.

by rendx

5/21/2026 at 5:45:17 AM

We understand the fundamental laws of physics well enough to say there is not some mysterious soul influencing the brain. Just like we can say that the moon is not made from cheese.

> Modern physics, in other words, provides evidence for what philosophers call “causal closure of the physical”: physical events have purely physical causes (Loewer 1995, Papineau 1995), at least in the regime relevant to human life. Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.

https://philpapers.org/archive/CARCAT-33

by hackingonempty

5/21/2026 at 6:22:11 AM

> We understand the fundamental laws of physics well enough to say there is not some mysterious soul influencing the brain. Just like we can say that the moon is not made from cheese.

I don't see how this relates to the "seat of consciousness" (with)in a human body, or how the biological system works together to "form it". Or where thinking or memory storage or retrieval takes place. At least that was what I was talking about. You're talking about something else.

It is a theory that we think in the brain. As far as I understand it, and please prove me wrong, there are other, valid theories? It's unscientific to discard theories purely based on belief. You seem to be arguing from a certain belief, not from science.

The modern term for "soul" is "psyche".

Remember that the OP was asking: "How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream?" -- clearly refering to something... conscious?

by rendx

5/20/2026 at 11:22:37 PM

Sure. We can't even agree on a good definition for "consciousness", we certainly don't know _how_ it works. I don't think there's a lot of debate around that specific point.

I'll try and read the paper more carefully after work, but my quick read was: they posit that consciousness might not be localized in the brain because if it were, then how would people be able to perform telepathy / remote viewing / future foresight? I can't assert that their non-local hypothesis is wrong, but I can pretty confidently say that the evidence they're using to back it up is unscientific BS.

by ywain

5/21/2026 at 9:52:48 AM

Agreed. I don’t consider what they present as “evidence”. But that doesn’t turn it into evidence against the theories either. There are other theories that explain “out of body experiences”. We just don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be convincing enough evidence to make the case for “the brain is where consciousness resides”, nor is there against it.

by 47282847

5/21/2026 at 12:37:12 AM

> It's still an open debate

No it's not, not by anyone serious.

We know the brain is the seat of consciousness because damage to the brain damages consciousness. There is no other organ in the body where that's true. You can completely replace all other organs without changing consciousness.

You can always find a paper by a quack that posits the earth is flat, that doesn't mean there's serious debate.

by cogman10

5/21/2026 at 6:33:18 AM

Can you point me to a paper or other source that proves that the brain is the seat of consciousness? Or that disproves other theories?

I am familiar with the works of Oliver Sacks, Paul Broks, and others, who have spent their lives researching damage to brains and the potential consequences for the psyche. I agree that it sounds like damage to the brain can have big impact, but none of that research, as far as I am aware, proves or even tries to argue that the brain is the only component necessary for consciousness to exist.

I am not interested in beliefs in one theory over another. I am not even asking for probabilities. I am asking for a scientific approach, which is to detail all possible (potentially fringe) theories until they're proven wrong. Anything else is the business of religion.

    Singer, J., & Damasio, A. (2025). The physiology of interoception and its adaptive role in consciousness. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 380(1939), 20240305. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0305
We think that organs can be replaced with little apparent change in consciousness (- this is an active research area, too, by the way). There is also research into how body tissues may form a part of what other theories place exclusively in the brain.

    Aderinto, N., Olatunji, G., Kokori, E., Ogieuhi, I. J., Moradeyo, A., Woldehana, N. A., Lawal, Z. D., Adetunji, B., Assi, G., Nazar, M. W., & Adebayo, Y. A. (2025). A narrative review on the psychosocial domains of the impact of organ transplantation. Discover mental health, 5(1), 20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-025-00148-y
> "Having its own enteric nervous system, sometimes referred to as the “second brain,” the gut is also an immune organ and has a large surface area interacting with gut microbiota. The gut has been shown to play an important role in many physiological processes, and may arguably do so as well in perception and cognition."

    Boem F, Greslehner GP, Konsman JP and Chiu L (2024) Minding the gut: extending embodied cognition and perception to the gut complex. Front. Neurosci. 17:1172783. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2023.1172783

by rendx

5/21/2026 at 5:37:59 PM

Ok, I've actually read into the 3 articles you've suggested and none of them are making the argument you are making. I think you just title mined.

Article 1. is about how the brain interprets incoming signals from the body

Article 2. is about dealing with psychiatric needs, such as medication compliance and stress, which result from organ transplants.

And, as I addressed in another comment, Article 3. is a discussion about the impacts of gut microbiome on mood. It is not a discussion of "consciousness".

by cogman10

5/21/2026 at 9:55:11 AM

Three are a million case studies and studies on it. So much so that you'll find studies on the best ways to repair consciousness after traumatic brain injuries [1].

You can't find a single case study where someone's consciousness was notably altered due to bowel resection. Something that has happened all the time.

Where are the people losing or having alerted consciousness after having their stomachs stapled? Their perforated bowels resected? Their bowel cancer polyps removed?

The closest you'll find is soldiers suffering from, understandable, PTSD.

Also, I'd point out that the studies you referenced aren't suggesting your point. They are saying that the gut can affect our mood and cravings. But as anyone that's taken a powerful antibiotic can attest, that did not modify their consciousness even though it nuked a huge portion of their biome.

People also get fecal transplants, they don't share consciousness as a result.

Unless you want to define consciousness as an eternal soul that exists in rocks, then you'll find no support for the suggestion that it exists outside a brain.

You also need to explain why it is that traumatic brain injuries alter consciousness and memory. Why it is that we can observe physical changes in the brains of dementia patients.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2931585/

by cogman10

5/21/2026 at 8:18:07 AM

If you're going full philosophy of science, are these alternative theories falsifiable in the first place? Much of this kind of argument turns into philosophy and metaphysics instead of empirical science.

by rcxdude

5/20/2026 at 10:32:30 PM

I believe to some extent that everything is conscious and that it's specifically our species' prized mental features that lessen it's level at least temporarily. purely esoterically the statement "a rock is more conscious than a human being" doesn't even seem too outrageous to me.

by raffael_de

5/20/2026 at 10:22:10 PM

See also: Hridaya.

by echelon_musk

5/20/2026 at 9:05:13 PM

It's not a great article, and it glosses over the reality that if you hooked this brain up to an EEG it would show unequivocal brain death. CELLS of the brain are alive, but in terms of being able to function in any sort of coordinated way there that ship sailed minutes after the person who donated their organs died. The wave of depolarization that marks brain death isn't something we can reverse, and what's being done here is all about metabolism and structure rather than those much more subtle functions.

IMO the more questionable aspect of this entire operation is the use of "AI" to reach conclusions about how the test molecules are being metabolized, but that's a lot less compelling than implying that some company is somehow preserving life in a disembodied brain.

by EA-3167

5/20/2026 at 9:36:34 PM

> isn't something we can reverse

Until you hook it up to a lightening rod in the top of a castle!

by genxy

5/20/2026 at 9:53:57 PM

Just remember to be a good father, or things get really epic in a gothic sort of way.

by EA-3167

5/21/2026 at 2:34:23 AM

So your saying you would be comfortable putting yourself on the donor list then?

by mikeweiss

5/21/2026 at 4:49:29 AM

Sure, the key point here is that you die first. Squeamishness is for the living, who have increasingly desperate need of neurological medicines.

by EA-3167

5/20/2026 at 10:40:00 PM

Everyone upvote this guy more, thanks

by DontBreakAlex

5/20/2026 at 9:04:25 PM

The word "alive" is doing a lot of work here. A brain is pretty much permanently fried after five to fifteen minutes without oxygen, and these are donor brains, not some emergency brain extraction team, so the timeframe will be much longer than that. There might be 'life' left in there in the technical sense, but there's no 'person' left.

by crooked-v

5/20/2026 at 9:07:17 PM

Reminds me of a certain scene from Knausgård's Morning Star.

by kreyenborgi

5/20/2026 at 9:58:10 PM

I’ll volunteer to waive my rights here. Feel free to do whatever you wish with my brain once it’s detached from my body :)

Can’t be worse than my organs being harvested for donation.

by cj

5/20/2026 at 9:52:27 PM

Brain does not have physical feelings, and with all other feelings cut off and not possible, even with consciousness it won’t be a horror scenario like in MetallicA’s “One”.

by dostick

5/20/2026 at 10:30:25 PM

People go crazy in solitary confinement, and they at least have senses left. I’m not sure I’m as confident as you on this one.

by ceejayoz

5/20/2026 at 9:04:06 PM

This makes me feel physically ill. It's like something straight out of a sci-fi dystopia, how did this get approved? Who determined that reinjecting biological activity into a human brain is definitely not some form of reanimation? If they're using heavy sedation to prevent electrical activity, is that not tacit admission they're not 100% sure that consciousness might return otherwise? How did this pass ethics review, or did they even bother?

by ethanrutherford

5/21/2026 at 1:59:39 AM

Approved? Ethics review? This is a private company. I was shocked when NYT Daily casually mentioned this exact behavior at Altos last week and just laughed it off. Like what is funny about making infinite torture machines because billionaires want to live forever?

by willis936

5/20/2026 at 10:52:37 PM

[flagged]

by DontBreakAlex

5/21/2026 at 1:30:06 AM

This is an interesting point

I think for direct comparison, the way of re-animating the brain described in the article would need to be attempted on the cardiac arrest patient as well so as to be sure it isn’t a “revival”-capable method

Might already be an obvious answer to practitioners in the field

by wanoir

5/21/2026 at 2:41:18 AM

My understanding is that after a few minutes without oxygen, the chemistry inside your brain is "fucked up" and even if you get oxygen back it's gone, you're already a vegetable. I like to think that "the state of the machine is gone" but I'm not a doctor

by DontBreakAlex

5/21/2026 at 5:52:45 AM

> even if you get oxygen back it's gone, you're already a vegetable

I think that's the part that might get people though. Since a comatose brain is not necessarily fully gone

So I guess the question is what differentiates a comatose brain from one that is no longer capable of consciousness?

by wanoir

5/20/2026 at 8:45:39 PM

“We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?”

Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 Activity recorded M.Y. 2302.22467 (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED)

by acheron

5/20/2026 at 9:12:49 PM

Give credit where credit is due: Descartes, Kant, Putnam, etc.

by gavmor

5/20/2026 at 10:25:48 PM

Meditations on First Philosophy messed me up bad. All of Descartes’ reasoning about the inability to determine whether experience was real made complete sense to me. But when I got to where he started to try to build back reality, I didn’t buy it. I can only believe in reality by willfully forgetting Descartes.

by dhosek

5/21/2026 at 2:19:31 AM

It’s really a solipsistic philosophy. The awkwardness of it was the fact he had a king and the church to appease in his arguments. Willfully forgetting Descartes is one way of dealing with it! (..or plotting a path out of it by reading him as a proto-existentialist)

by transitorykris

5/21/2026 at 2:01:10 AM

But take comfort in knowing you are not the void. Cogito ergo sum. It's the only true refute of solipsism.

by willis936

5/20/2026 at 9:37:13 PM

Hmm pretty sure I saw this in the thought traces of Claude the other day...

by mattlondon

5/20/2026 at 9:31:25 PM

It'll be Brian Reynolds in this case. It's a quote from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

by sodaplayer

5/21/2026 at 1:04:44 PM

Source: Bioenhancement Center (SMAC), Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

by Gooblebrai

5/20/2026 at 9:01:56 PM

This is legal but I can't legally pay another adult for sex or take drugs that could harm me? And there are many restrictions on gambling. It's weird how some morals are legislated but not others.

by NDlurker

5/20/2026 at 9:09:10 PM

This provides humanity with a greater good than gambling

by Aboutplants

5/20/2026 at 9:49:16 PM

So did Nazi eugenics.

by throwaway613746

5/20/2026 at 10:44:19 PM

How so?

by adi_kurian

5/21/2026 at 6:47:57 AM

Eugenics under the national socialists was extreme and twisted. But it still was about eugenics at its core. Even today we apply practices of eugenics, for example with prenatal screening for down syndrome followed by abortion. Gambling sets a very low bar when it comes to upsides.

by trallnag

5/21/2026 at 2:26:57 PM

[dead]

by throwaway613746

5/21/2026 at 4:58:17 AM

All you mentioned can have negative side effects for third parties.

by croes

5/21/2026 at 5:33:18 PM

Compared to legal and regulated drugs? Rarely.

by subscribed

5/21/2026 at 5:38:40 PM

Compared to this brain research

by croes

5/21/2026 at 5:29:59 PM

Disagree

by NDlurker

5/21/2026 at 5:41:44 PM

So there are no crimes related to drug and gambling addiction?

Are you kidding me?

Prostitution has a big forced prostitution problem

by croes

5/21/2026 at 5:51:13 PM

Would those associated crimes happen as frequently if the acts were legal and regulated? Should we ban alcohol and cars and skydiving and any other risky behavior?

by NDlurker

5/21/2026 at 7:04:33 PM

Yes, they would.

DUI kills people no matter if the drug is legal or illegal.

Crimes to finance the next drug dose or bet also don’t care if legal or illegal.

And yes, alcohol should be banned or at least not glorified

by croes

5/21/2026 at 1:00:14 AM

Can't make having fun too easy. It ruins the control the elites have over us.

by booleandilemma

5/21/2026 at 5:02:19 AM

Drugs and gambling are ways to get controlled

by croes

5/20/2026 at 8:33:31 PM

I just finished reading "That Hideous Strength" (CS Lewis) this weekend where they have a disembodied head kept "alive", and some convicts in the pipeline whose heads/brains, it is implied, will be experimented on similarly. Lewis was remarkably prophetic.

by prewett

5/20/2026 at 9:06:41 PM

The Dust Theory in Permutation City by Greg Egan pushes the concept to bizarre levels.

by renticulous

5/20/2026 at 10:19:50 PM

Greg Egan is a legend

by bicx

5/21/2026 at 2:25:34 AM

Came here to say this. The Space Trilogy is one of the best series I've ever read. That Hideous Strength reminds me a LOT of what's happening these days. Even moreso than 1984. Would love to see a great director tackle it as a film.

by quirk

5/20/2026 at 8:55:55 PM

I will be removing my organ donor status. This is horrifying.

by abtinf

5/20/2026 at 8:57:31 PM

It looks like the families have to agree to do this, before your brain can be donated:

> Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.

by pavel_lishin

5/20/2026 at 10:23:22 PM

Until we find out otherwise. There have been multiple organ harvesting scandals lately. Informed consent has become a marketing concept, no longer a reality.

by smeggysmeg

5/20/2026 at 11:09:37 PM

Citation required. Specifically for a western country happening at any notable scale via organ donors.

by tyre

5/20/2026 at 11:21:45 PM

Citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/us/kentucky-organ-donatio...

Organ harvesting of living patients hasn't fully scaled up as a practice yet, but it's definitely a major source of income for some rural hospitals.

by Bratmon

5/21/2026 at 1:17:08 AM

The claim was there was multiple "organ harvesting scandals". Upon reading, it seems like the system worked, the doctors refused to retrieve the organs because the patient showed signs of life. It also looks like they have worked to put in place stricter protocols for organ retrieval since then.

I would say accidentally mistaking the patient is dead in any case is hardly the same as purposefully harvesting the organs from people they know are alive to get paid. The article does not state any evidence to suggest they are doing this.

There is obviously going to be some pressure to make a decision to retrieve the organs in the interest of not wasting something that could save another's life as there is a limited time frame where these organs can be viable. There is a huge distinction between that and going to patients that have no doubt they are alive and harvesting their organs.

by aceofspades19

5/20/2026 at 10:36:05 PM

Can't the donor stipulate take anything but the brain?

by dnnddidiej

5/21/2026 at 12:34:04 AM

I highly highly doubt that by consenting to be an organ donor you are consenting to this.

Unless you live in some incredibly lawless country?

Organ donation is so very sensitive, and those who use the service are so aware of the sensitivities I think that you'd be insane to have such a reaction to this media piece.

In fact, I'll go one further. I have serious doubts you were ever an organ donor at all.

by JimTheMan

5/21/2026 at 2:17:29 AM

Your doubts are solidly founded; I can confirm I am not yet dead and my organs have not yet been donated.

by abtinf

5/21/2026 at 5:34:07 PM

You wouldn't know if we simulated you well enough.

by subscribed

5/20/2026 at 7:57:19 PM

"alive" is not a meaningful term. It makes sense only when you have blunt instruments to measure aliveness, like pulse, respiration, heart beat, etc.

Once you go much more granular, there's no particular spot to make a distinction between "alive" and "not alive", until you stop seeing any electrical, biochemical and mechanical activity of any kind, at which point you're basically saying "inert".

by unsupp0rted

5/20/2026 at 10:02:10 PM

Is this dry humor and/or a deliberate attempt to make the reader even more horrified by the experiment? Or only a different sensibility from mine? No judgement. I just really can't tell.

by oh_my_goodness

5/20/2026 at 8:30:50 PM

And yet, "my child is alive" versus "my child is dead" have some… meaning.

by ceejayoz

5/20/2026 at 8:54:28 PM

With what we are learning about how gut flora, can a brain be considered conscious while detached from the digestive system?

by lapetitejort

5/20/2026 at 9:05:26 PM

NEW VISTA, OUTER RIM—Just a cycle ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its first owner died, it sits on a slab draped in tubes that quiver as they pump liters of blood substitute and other fluids through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste. As far as anyone knows, with many of its key functions intact but maybe awarness muffled by drugs, the brain hovers between life and death. As people subject it to experimental drugs, sensors record the brain's reactions, capturing hundreds of data points on its cells, proteins, and physiology. Then, after 24 hours in this state, it will be sliced into hundreds of pieces for more detailed study.

by cduzz

5/20/2026 at 8:50:49 PM

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

by hokkos

5/20/2026 at 10:01:15 PM

We don't create the torment nexus, we are creating all the possible torment nexuses

by ReptileMan

5/20/2026 at 11:31:54 PM

I find it hard to believe the donors had any idea they were authorizing an experiment like this but sure hope I am wrong.

Reminds me of the Three Body Problem and sending a live brain to the cosmos because the tyranny of the rocket equation made a whole human impossible.

by cogogo

5/20/2026 at 9:06:34 PM

To be honest, if my only other option was to be buried, I would love to let my brain be connected to some machine that try to keep it as alive-like as possible.

Just please don't remove my brain before I'm 1000% certainly dead.

by acdbddh

5/20/2026 at 9:14:10 PM

To some extent, volunteering for any sort of medical study is signing up to be tortured in the hopes that someone down the line might be saved by the research. Most cancer treatments, for instance, are objectively terrible to go through, and when you're testing and developing the protocols you're pumping already sick people full of poisons and hoping for the best.

There's some fraction of people who would prefer to be kept alive as a brain in a jar, depending on the alternatives, but getting to that point is going to require a bunch of people to volunteer to undergo excruciating torture as we learn how to keep the brain alive, how to keep them comfortable, how to keep them conscious, sane and let them interact with the world.

by saalweachter

5/20/2026 at 10:46:41 PM

This is precisely why I've never been interested in being an organ donor.

I don't remember where specifically I learned this, but I was taught that tissue has to be alive to be useful, so they harvest it when you're almost-dead. Having my last moments be being literally dismembered is not something I wish for my future self.

by bsimpson

5/20/2026 at 11:12:36 PM

They will never remove tissue if you're still alive. This is the reason organ donation is most common in brain-death cases, because the tissue is still alive but you are entirely dead. As you point out, it would be horrible to dismember someone who is still alive and would certainly violate their oath.

I hope this is a comforting answer, I choose to be an organ donor because of these details.

by scratchyone

5/21/2026 at 5:17:40 AM

Another option is cryonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics

It's not the same as what you suggest, but there's still hope you could regain consciousness, and this is a process that some companies already have infrastructure for. It is pretty expensive though.

by JacobKfromIRC

5/21/2026 at 4:28:49 AM

True. You'd probably go crazy as a brain disconnected from your body, regardless of what drugs they give you.. But It'd be an interesting final experience, I guess. I do hope they're getting pain killers along with the anaesthesia, though.

by FrinkleFrankle

5/20/2026 at 10:14:43 PM

Let me add Johnny Got His Gun to the surprisingly large number of works that seem to anticipate exactly this premise.

by jjk166

5/21/2026 at 3:50:08 PM

Ah sweet, manmade horrors beyond comprehension.

by netbioserror

5/20/2026 at 9:05:24 PM

The obvious question I would have asked: given the concern that this may not be ethical if the brains are still “alive” AND the concern that a brain separated from the body probably doesn’t function these same, why wouldn’t we test things in living monkeys (instead of mice)???

It seems that the likelihood is high that the right animal model would yield superior data???

by ckemere

5/21/2026 at 12:18:30 AM

As long as this practice is legal then I am unwilling to be an organ donor.

by efitz

5/21/2026 at 1:12:22 PM

I'm curious, before you knew about this article, why were you willing to be an organ donor?

by Gooblebrai

5/21/2026 at 12:37:05 AM

All of these comments are making me realise that the US is an incredibly low trust environment, where people think horrific things are going to happen to them without the their/or their families consent.

And who am I to judge? Maybe that is the reality.

by JimTheMan

5/20/2026 at 9:57:59 PM

They have no mouth and they must scream...

by ReptileMan

5/20/2026 at 10:54:25 PM

That's demonic creativity.

by akomtu

5/20/2026 at 10:05:00 PM

This is literally my biggest fear. The idea that my biology or consciousness could be keep alive and in a state of suffering for years, decades, centuries or longer via neural simulation or biological intervention.

I do wonder if AI advancements will allow me to see these horrors play out. Hopefully not to myself.

https://spikeartmagazine.com/articles/libra-season-hello-cru...

by kypro

5/21/2026 at 5:08:41 AM

So the definition of being dead is an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.

Does this mean the donor was (1) or can the "revive" after (2)?

by croes

5/20/2026 at 8:58:33 PM

What the fuck? This is beyond the pale.

by caconym_

5/20/2026 at 11:14:13 PM

A nice reminder to not check the "organ donor" box at the DMV

by artursapek

5/20/2026 at 11:10:07 PM

Does this tech take us one step closer to a human brain in a robot body, or some kind of simulated reality?

by aussieguy1234

5/20/2026 at 9:27:19 PM

“We'll send only a brain"

by aftbit

5/20/2026 at 8:54:34 PM

Just no.

by jpwesselink

5/20/2026 at 8:55:34 PM

[dead]

by wrecked_em

5/20/2026 at 11:43:43 PM

[flagged]

by hungryhobbit

5/20/2026 at 11:50:46 PM

Is there really a distinction between torturing humans and torturing pets? Aside from torture being torture, pets are members of people's families!

by c420

5/21/2026 at 12:02:56 AM

> pets are members of people's families!

If you could only rescue one member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize the pet over a human member of your family?

by jolmg

5/21/2026 at 12:39:33 AM

>> pets are members of people's families!

> If you could only rescue one member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize the pet over a human member of your family?

If you could only rescue one family member from some kind of deadly emergency and they had equal chances, would you prioritize a stranger over a member of your family?

by runjake

5/21/2026 at 2:53:54 AM

> would you prioritize a stranger over a member of your family?

I'll preface by saying that I don't have a pet. However, if one had to burn alive between a stranger's little girl and my cat, it's easier to empathize, "what if that were my daughter?". It's easy to imagine the father's pain, and because the girl is human, it's easier to imagine what might be going on in the little girl's head as well. As the heat's becoming too strong for her to bear, it's easier to imagine her expression, her pain, and her fear.

It's harder to imagine and empathize with what might be going on through a cat's head. They don't think as we do and don't express themselves as we do. It's not like one can't anthropomorphize and empathize that way, but it's not the same as empathizing with a human. It's harder to imagine and feel their thoughts and emotions to the same level of detail.

I'd feel for the cat, but I think the girl burning alive would give me the worse nightmares.

by jolmg

5/21/2026 at 12:14:43 AM

Legal/social consequences weight into your question.

A more straightforward angle could be money spent: would someone spend more for the wellbeing of their pet than for a family member (elderlies included).

by makeitdouble

5/21/2026 at 2:42:24 AM

I would save my cat before a distant cousin I met like four times in my life, absolutely.

by klausa

5/21/2026 at 12:08:02 AM

If I had to choose between my cat and my daughter...

Hell, if I had to choose between MY cat and YOUR daughter, the choice would will be easy

by stirfish

5/21/2026 at 12:48:25 AM

Why not? There's a difference between castrating a human and castrating an animal, right?

by something765478

5/21/2026 at 2:34:47 AM

> MASS TORTURE MILLIONS OF NON-PET ANIMALS EVERY YEAR ... just so we can all have cheaper Big Macs.

Torture - the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure.

by gblargg

5/21/2026 at 3:11:56 AM

Oh the dictionary defines a word, that makes it completely different then

by marshray

5/21/2026 at 12:04:08 AM

[flagged]

by juliend2

5/21/2026 at 3:46:06 AM

This was also my first thought in defense and to spot my hypocrisy. I spent many a minute going back and forth why am I judging a brain that lived a life and is “dead” more the the potential of a life, stem cell research, abortion in general and I gotta admit it was a invoking thought experiment.

I’m still on the acceptance side of abortion, stem cell research and other things like human cloning. They advance science, reduce human suffering - yes I get abortion doesn’t fit there exactly but it should be the mothers/parents right to ave access to abortion. All very political and highly debatable points today.

I understand if I accept that, what’s accepting experimentation on a brain dead brain - it should be a no brainer.

Easier because it’s just an artifact of a person that’s deceased but it is easy to invoke imagery in my own brain of an eternal torture chamber, someone’s consciousness locked away never recoverable or removable undergoing this amount of pain, but also is it pain if it can’t feel it?

The bodies other organs, it’s easy to dismiss as collections of cells, etc but: the brain just makes it harder to justify because it is the organ we use to interpret the world and imagining a world of pain and wondering what if that is the layer we are in now… is just scary.

by rootsudo

5/21/2026 at 12:32:29 AM

Is it, though?

by 31337Logic