Some Scientists Worry that “Minibrains” Could Be Suffering + Poll

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Recently I wrote about cerebral organoids or “mini-brains grown in Petri dishes” Here and I have mentioned the fact that the human brain is probably the most mysterious body part as while we would love to do research with it we also sort of forbid ourselves from doing so. And I also said that cerebral organoids are so far allowed to be used. But this may be changing soon.

And I seem to have spoken too early as a group of experts from the Green Neuroscience Lab warns about using cerebral organoids that are grown in laboratories from stem cells. They think that these organoids may be capable of perceiving. A while nothing of the sort has been scientifically confirmed, the risk is apparently too great.

The director of the Green Neuroscience Laboratory said for The Guardian “If there’s even a possibility of the organoid being sentient, we could be crossing that line, we don’t want people doing research where there is potential for something to suffer.”

This is an incredibly nuanced topic that will likely require many man-hours (if not may-days) of discussing whether it is ethically OK or not to used cerebral organoids for research. But I do want to know your opinion so please be sure to vote in the poll that is linked.

Vote in the poll

View the results of the poll

Sources:

• https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/21/scientists-may-have-crossed-ethical-line-in-growing-human-brains
• https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(19)30337-6
• https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/25/growing-brains-in-labs-why-its-time-for-an-ethical-debate
• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04813-x

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