FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER – HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO MAKE ONE?

I read a long time ago that there were researchers that used William Gibson’s Neuromancer as a fun way to measure technological progress. That is, how many of the technologies described in that book can be achieved with current day science. I’ve decided not to fact-check that statement because I want it to be true, so it will stand unopposed.

But maybe we should go further back? Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provides a similar checklist. How far have we gotten in emulating the esteemed Dr. Frankenstein? Can we stitch together pieces of a different bodies, find a fresh brain and send an electric current strong enough the kick-start the body and mind into action? I’m sure you will all be happy to find out that we are getting closer by the day. Medical research in a variety of fields, such as electrophysiology, organ transplants, stem cell research and synthetic biology all point towards the day when we can all have a Frankenstein’s monster as a pet to call our own.

The one we probably all feel is still some way off is re-animating the brain, but fear not, there is current research showing this too might be possible. Five years ago Zvonimir Vrselja, a neuroscientist at Yale School of Medicine, and his colleagues decided to remove a pig’s brain from its skull. They then connected the dead brain’s vasculature to tubes that would pump a special cocktail of preserving agents into its blood vessels and turned the perfusion machine on four hours later.

In New Scientist, they describe what happened then: “The cortex turned from grey to pink. Brain cells started producing proteins. Neurons juddered back to life, displaying signs of metabolic activity indistinguishable from that of living cells. Basic cellular functions, activities that were supposed to irreversibly cease after blood flow stopped, were restored. The pig’s brain wasn’t alive, exactly – but it certainly wasn’t dead.”

Now, five years later, the team used the technique on human brains. For the pig’s brain, researchers made sure that no perception-related brain activity occurred, through sedatives that prevented electrical activity and ended the experiment after six hours. And similar approaches are taken with the human brains.

So we are one step closer to the dream of Dr. Frankenstein. Reanimation of the brain is possible. Now all we need is an unstable scientist of questionable morals to set it all in motion. Maybe the idea to stitch together body parts scavenged from the cemetery isn’t the most likely scenario, but how about grown bodies? Or partially synthetic bodies?

What do you think? Will this happen? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

References:

• The radical treatments bringing people back from the brink of death - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435193-700-the-radical-treatments-bringing-people-back-from-the-brink-of-death/

• Restoration of brain circulation and cellular functions hours post-mortem - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1099-1

• Scientists Have Proven It’s Possible to Bring a Dead Brain ‘Back to Life’—But There’s a Catch - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a63459169/brain-reanimation/

• Doctors Intrigued by Treatment That Makes Dead Brains Show Signs of Life - https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctors-intrigued-brains-back-dead

• Unrelated, but fascinating information about Dr. James Lind who is thought to have provided inspiration to Mary Shelley - The real Doctor Frankenstein? - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1279684/

• If you haven’t read Neuromancer or Frankenstein, shame on you. Also, for a laugh, watch the 1985 movie Re-animator (based on a story by HP Lovecraft). It delves into these matters too with a campy, gruesome and worryingly amusing tone.