The Threat of " Immortality ".

It sounds like science fiction but an experiment has proved that it is possible for the brain to actively survive and continue to function after it has been disconnected from the body.  That has long thought to be impossible but a group of scientists has successfully kept a pig's brain functioning in a machine that pumped blood, oxygen and chemicals that prevent brain death four hours after it was removed from the pig's body.

When it comes to organ transplants, the organs of pigs  most closely resemble those of the human body and work is well advanced in seeing what pig to human transplants can be made to prolong human life.   These experiments with pig brains have cracked the puzzle of keeping the brain from deteriorating after removal from the skull which we thought was an automatic process.

The brain is reliant on an uninterrupted blood flow and should this cease for even a few seconds it causes irreversible damage. These Yale scientists have been able to restore brain function four hours after removal from the pig's cranium and there is every indication that it is again " thinking ".

It raises important ethical questions because it is inevitable that somewhere - someone is going to duplicate that experiment with the human brain and we seem to be tinkering on the edge of immortality.  If the human brain can be kept alive after death it sounds conceivable that it could be linked to computer science to create what ethicists would term a " Frankenstein monster ".

Another impossibility in the science world was the ability to edit genes and we tried to introduced ethics to prevent permanent alteration to the human species, but already rogue scientists have ignored those prohibitions and we lack the ability to control genetics.  Progress on keeping brains alive after death is about to deliver a new ethical question which will certainly intrude into the sphere of politics.

The one saving grace about megalomaniacs who desire to rule the world is that they eventually die and are hopefully replaced by saner minds.  The thought of a human brain preserved and directing the armies of a country indefinitely is chilling.  In many ways it was a sad day for planet earth when we invented the nuclear bomb.  Where science is taking us now is even more frightening.

Will we see the day when people of the ilk of Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison are deemed too import to be allowed to be lost to humanity by the closure of death.  It sounds like we are on the cusp of preserving the human brain indefinitely in a functioning state and that will certainly be attractive to those men and women who have attained great power during their lifetime.

Perhaps there are some aspects of science that are better left undiscovered !