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Brain in a Vat: 5 Challenges for the In Vitro Brain

Brain in a Vat: 5 Challenges for the In Vitro Brain

Julian Savulescu

@juliansavulescu

In Roald Dahl’s short story, William and Mary, William dies of cancer. But a novel procedure allows his brain, with one eye attached, to be kept functioning in a clear plastic vat. His wife convinces William’s neurosurgeon to allow her to take William (or rather his brain and eye) home with her.

When home, Mary places William in a prominent place in the sitting room from where he can survey all her actions. He had been a domineering and controlling husband. He forbade her to have a TV and to smoke. Now, Mary purchases a TV and takes up smoking, blowing smoke in the direction of William. She will punish him for his abuse and his brain may stay alive, utterly powerless, for up to 200 years.

This story was science fiction. But yesterday, the first step to creating the brain in a vat was reported in the US. Back in July 2013, scientists reported the first organ grown from stem cells: a liver. A kidney, heart and other organs have followed. The potential of these technologies to eventually provide replacement organs is also an opportunity to sweep away complex ethical issues: most obviously in avoiding the need for organ donation, but also in enhancing the ability to test drugs on lab grown organs before testing in humans- reducing the risk of harm to research participants, hopefully some day to a negligible amount.

Now, just 2 years later, the first brain has been grown in a laboratory. The organoid has been grown for 12 weeks, the equivalent of a 5 week old foetus.

Lead researcher Professor Rene Anand, from Ohio State University in the US,
said:

“It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain.”

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Facebook and political polarization.

There has been a lot of concern expressed about the role that social media might play in political polarization. The worry is that social media users might only expose themselves to news stories with which they agree and have friends that reinforce their own views, and thereby become more extreme in their views and less understanding or tolerant of those who disagree with them. A recent paper seems to show that the phenomenon is real, but less extreme than we might have thought; at least among those people who identify their political orientation. This group is likely to be more politically aware than other users and may be thought to be more extreme in their exposure to self-reinforcing stories. On average, this group had about 23% of friends with an opposing political viewpoint, and about 29% of the stories they read presented views that were opposed to theirs.Read More »Facebook and political polarization.

Guest Post: ‘I don’t want to die, but I am too scared to be anything different’: The role of identity in mental illness

Anke Snoek
Macquarie University

If you break a leg or have a cold, it probably wouldn’t affect your identity at all. But when you have an invasive, chronic illness, it will probably change your way of being in the world, and the way you perceive yourself. Our body is the vehicle with which we interact with the world. There are many personal accounts in the disability bioethics literature on how a chronic illness affects one’s sense of being. For example, in the work of Kay Toombs, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or Havi Carel, who was diagnosed with lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare lung disease. Both describe how their illnesses gradually changed their identities, their senses of being.

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Guest Post: Agree to disagree? Why not?

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Pedro Jesus Perez Zafrilla.
(University of Valencia)

In a previous post on this blog, David Aldridge questions the social convention of ending arguments by “agreeing to disagree.”, arguing that doing so “ends the dialogue at precisely the point where what is really at issue is beginning to emerge” . He also questions the motivations of those who seek to end an argument by offering to “agree to disagree” However, I think agreeing to disagree is a good idea and I will try to argue why.

Debating could be characterized by three features: a context of disagreement, open-minded participants, and an expectation that one can rationally convince his/her interlocutor. Then, people who debate do so because they believe that agreement is possible. The achievement of agreement is the aim of  dialogue.

Nevertheless, the desire to reach agreement shouldn’t lead us to forget that debate is fruitful only under certain conditions. Some of them include limitations of time and the number of participants, because the decision must be made, or agreement reached, within a reasonable span of time. But there are also other limitations in the debating process. We might begin with the expectation that one can rationally convince one’s interlocutor about the rightness of one’s position but we reach difficulties when incommensurable views are confronted. Some examples are found in debates on taxes, euthanasia or models of education. Here what is morally significant for some persons is not so for others. So, concepts such as “a dignified life” or “quality of education” have different meanings for each side of the debate. Accordingly, the arguments one side presents will not be convincing to the other side. In these cases, the expectation that one can rationally convince one’s interlocutor will generate polarization processes toward antagonist positions (see Haidt, J. “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail. A Social Intuitionist approach to Moral judgement”, Psychological Review, 108, 2001, p.823). Even more, each person will think that his/her interlocutor is not morally motivated (Schulz, Kathryn. Being wrong. Adventures in the margin of error. London: Portobello Books, 2010, pp.107-110).

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Doping in Hollywood

For his role in the new movie Southpaw, Jake Gyllenhaal gained 45 lbs (20 kgs) of muscle in six months. Many praised Gyllenhall for his dedication in undergoing this remarkable physical transformation. Few have questioned whether this achievement was aided by the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Some in the bodybuilding community claim that such massive weight gain would be nearly impossible without the use of steroids. For experienced bodybuilders, it is considered an accomplishment to gain 7-10 pounds of muscle in a year “naturally”. Training in combination with taking human growth hormone (HGH) can add 4.6 pounds of lean muscle mass, in three weeks.

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Pinker Bioethics: What Should We Learn?

Julian Savulescu 
Twitter @juliansavulescu

Steven Pinker has recently written an op-ed questioning the contribution of bioethics to the safe and efficient regulation of research. This has been widely misinterpreted and criticised, though Alice Dreger has written a recent accurate blog in support of Pinker. Pinker provocatively said that bioethics should get out of the way of research. This has been interpreted to mean that we should give up ethics review of research. Nobody, not me, and not Steven Pinker, thinks we should abandon ethical review of research. He actually says, ” Of course, individuals must be protected from identifiable harm, but we already have ample safeguards for the safety and informed consent of patients and research subjects.” Pinker is objecting to the unnecessary, unproductive obstruction that much bioethics represents to good research and regulation.

I largely agree with him and have said as much myself over the years. I recently wrote a piece for the anniversary issue of the JME arguing as much. I applaud him for trying to generate some self-reflection in the field.

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Left, Right, and Belief Formation.

A recent article by Jeff Sparrow on the Australian writer Helen Dale/Darville/Demidenko has left me pondering the way that we form beliefs. Under the penname ‘Helen Demidenko’, Dale published a novel that told the story of a Ukrainian family, members of whom were perpetrators of crimes against Jews during the Holocaust. The novel was instantly successful, winning major awards, and equally controversial. It was described as anti-Semitic in its sympathetic depiction of ordinary Ukranians and its (alleged) caricatures of Jews. The book gained an aura of authenticity from the author’s claims that she based much of it on interviews with members of her own family, who had lived through the events depicted. Demidenko’s bubble burst when it was revealed she was born Helen Darville, and had no Ukrainian relatives to recount these tales.Read More »Left, Right, and Belief Formation.

Guest Post: The Moral Imperative for Bioethics

By Daniel K. Sokol
Daniel Sokol, PhD, is a bioethicist and lawyer at 12 King’s Bench Walk, London. He has sat on several ethics committees, including the UK’s Ministry of Defence’s Research Ethics Committee.

In a recent Opinion piece in the Boston Globe, Professor Steven Pinker made the surprising suggestion that the primary moral goal of today’s bioethics should be to “get out of the way”. “A truly ethical bioethics”, he argued, “should not bog down research in red tape, moratoria or threats of prosecution”.

This bold assertion no doubt echoes the thoughts of many scientists whose research requires the approval of an ethics review committee before springing to life. As a PhD student many years ago, I experienced first hand the frustrations of the tedious review process. I spent hours drafting the protocol, revisions and responding to the Committee’s questions, time I would have preferred to spend conducting research. While a popular sentiment, getting out of the way is not the goal of bioethics.

The goal of bioethics is to allow potentially beneficial research while ensuring that the risk of harm to participants and others is proportionate, reduced to the lowest practicable level, and within morally acceptable limits. The risk of harm can never be eliminated, but it can usually be reduced with minimal effort or cost. It may be as simple as testing a new piece of equipment one more time in a laboratory before attaching it to a human for testing.

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Guest Post: Caring for Our Home

Darlei Dall’Agnol
Professor of Ethics, Federal University of Santa Catarina.

Many nations are already preparing for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in December. One of the main goals of the Conference is to reach an agreement on climate change, especially on greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Following Rio-92 and after more than 20 years of negotiations, the Conference has a unique opportunity to enact the first legally binding document for all the nations of the world. This is certainly a significant step in caring more for our little planet, which is after all our home. As citizens and philosophers concerned with environmental issues, we should support and try to help bring about such an agreement. However, there are also signs that some countries are evading their responsibilities. Earlier this month, in her first visit to the United States since Wikileaks revealed in 2013 the US’ spying , the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced that Brazil’s goal is to bring illegal deforestation down to zero over the next few years. Moreover, the country will work towards reforestation of 12 million hectares. According to some North-American newspapers, this announcement was below what was expected by the White House, which had hoped for higher targets in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of the President Obama’s priorities for his legacy. He is trying to influence China, India, Brazil and other developing countries to get a satisfactory outcome at the climate Conference later this year. Is this a sign of what is going to happen at the Conference? Will the US just press other developing countries to cut down gas emissions? What about the US’ own environmental responsibilities?

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