Not to derail this, but life doesn't have to end. We aren't trying hard enough to solve death.
Here's a reverse salient / step function improvement:
Clone monoclonal decephalized humans and grow them like plants for blood, organs, and basic research. Remove their heads before birth with developmental gene cutoff of neural crest development, or for the easier path, surgically decapitate them before they have brains.
Grow them in transgenic pig uteruses, then hook them up to respirators and gastric feeder tubes. Electronically stimulate their hearts. Inject them with hormones. Grow these clones into adulthood and keep them in vast warehouses.
They don't have brains, so they're not persons. (I'm not looking to debate this with anyone who disagrees.)
Suddenly we have the best experimental platform for researching every non-brain disorder. We can do studies experimentally rather than population summary statistics and identify all the negative environmental and dietary inputs.
Infinite insulin, infinite blood, infinite organs. Nobody dies waiting for a transplant. Bonus: the clones don't express surface HLAs and epitopes that trigger immune responses that require lifelong immune suppression.
We can put young blood and young organs into people. Replace thymuses, the leading cause of immune system decline.
Today's approaches in biology are punch card slow. We're doing double blind clean room science because we're too afraid. The field is content with running gels, and that's why I stopped pursing it academically and am trying to forge my way with money. We have to try harder, bolder things.
The field needs an injection of the engineering mindset. This isn't the only thing that needs to change, but it's a start.
The human body is a machine. We can duplicate and clone these machines for spare parts and basic research.
Spin off the tech and do the same for cows and pigs, and suddenly you have ethical meat that isn't fake.
If I ever have a big exit, I'm throwing my weight into this problem.
I have no doubt we could reduce deaths by cancer and heart disease if we had this platform. I also think we'd drastically increase health span.
If you want a longer life for yourself and your loved ones, clone humans.
The company that does this will be the biggest company in all biotech. Every other company will license your supply, and hospitals will be buying from you constantly. It's got a worldwide market, too.
I, too, think about this stuff. And then I remember that most governments won't legalize cannabis (while alcohol is legal) and will ban drugs for no good reason (piracetam, gabapentin, melatonin, salbutamol). And the majority of people support it.
Even if you can get the funding and the scientists, you'll be roadblocked and quite possibly imprisoned for doing what you're suggesting.
Bad habit to use the word 'we' where you mean I and even worse habit to assume you know what your 'loved ones' want.
Everyone who speaks this way sooner or later makes the discovery, almost always painfully, that their needs are but a small fraction in that massively wide spectrum of human needs.
Yes, although I assume others somewhere must be thinking similarly. It seems self evident to me.
I post this idea on HN every now and then when I see the subjects of cancer, aging, or death come up.
> Would you know how difficult it would be to do right now?
Incredibly difficult. This is an Apollo project.
You'd need egg donors, good embryo yields, a protocol that sustains life throughout development, womb surrogates, decephalization that doesn't kill, life support systems at every stage, birthing, machines to keep them alive after birth, ...
Once you've worked out the kinks though, this thing prints money. But that's not what's exciting to me - this gets us one step closer to ending death.
I don't think we've taken a single step in that direction yet, so it'd be nice to finally get started.
I find it amusing that the same people writing ad tech and tracking software object to this. (I don't presume to say you do this, just that this demographic objects so strongly.)
Humanity needs to mean something, but let's shove some ads for Gillette down their throats.
It really makes me wonder what goes on in the minds of other people.
My proposed tech doesn't make life any less meaningful. In fact, it has a greater appreciation for life since it knows how important persons are and seeks to better their lives.
The sad truth is that most people I’ve met, even if tremendously intelligent in their field of focus and work, are still quite “simple”. I don’t mean this derogatorily, but rather that said people do not think about the nature of their reality any broader or deeper than the framework of thought imprinted on them by their culture, their religion, and their parents.
I am with you on this approach, fully. I’ve thought about it a lot over the last decade in particular. I find it odd that someone would insinuate it somehow lessens our humanity. Is it more humane to keep animals (like pigs) with provable consciousness, intelligence and feelings within the horrible meat farms we do today? Apparently that’s “humane” because it’s a necessity. How narrow minded is that?
I’m continuing to slowly introduce this idea to people via different angles — ethical meat is a great one. Thanks for sharing and giving me hope by showing there are more out there with a broader mindset.
I think that the vast majority of humans would find it repulsive to cut the brain out of a living human being to avoid sentience and create some of of figleaf loophole to allow for the farming of human organs.
A sociopath running a company doing this would probably decide to cut costs anyway.
What’s the big deal with sentience anyway? I’m sure you could have McKinsey write a business case that allowing the market to decide what a healthy liver is worth would motivate people to sacrifice themselves for a more productive member of society.
It's only gross because of our primitive brain. We wouldn't blink twice at gutting or rebuilding a computer.
If you say, "it's not the same". Why, just because a pig was created by God (or grows in nature) and a computer tower is created by humans?
Once either are mature, they're both owned by humans. One has more advanced motor functions and an integrated bioreactor, but the other can also do things that we can't.
Here's a reverse salient / step function improvement:
Clone monoclonal decephalized humans and grow them like plants for blood, organs, and basic research. Remove their heads before birth with developmental gene cutoff of neural crest development, or for the easier path, surgically decapitate them before they have brains.
Grow them in transgenic pig uteruses, then hook them up to respirators and gastric feeder tubes. Electronically stimulate their hearts. Inject them with hormones. Grow these clones into adulthood and keep them in vast warehouses.
They don't have brains, so they're not persons. (I'm not looking to debate this with anyone who disagrees.)
Suddenly we have the best experimental platform for researching every non-brain disorder. We can do studies experimentally rather than population summary statistics and identify all the negative environmental and dietary inputs.
Infinite insulin, infinite blood, infinite organs. Nobody dies waiting for a transplant. Bonus: the clones don't express surface HLAs and epitopes that trigger immune responses that require lifelong immune suppression.
We can put young blood and young organs into people. Replace thymuses, the leading cause of immune system decline.
Today's approaches in biology are punch card slow. We're doing double blind clean room science because we're too afraid. The field is content with running gels, and that's why I stopped pursing it academically and am trying to forge my way with money. We have to try harder, bolder things.
The field needs an injection of the engineering mindset. This isn't the only thing that needs to change, but it's a start.
The human body is a machine. We can duplicate and clone these machines for spare parts and basic research.
Spin off the tech and do the same for cows and pigs, and suddenly you have ethical meat that isn't fake.
If I ever have a big exit, I'm throwing my weight into this problem.
I have no doubt we could reduce deaths by cancer and heart disease if we had this platform. I also think we'd drastically increase health span.
If you want a longer life for yourself and your loved ones, clone humans.
The company that does this will be the biggest company in all biotech. Every other company will license your supply, and hospitals will be buying from you constantly. It's got a worldwide market, too.
If we don't do it, China will.