From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2000 - 06:12:25 MST
hal@finney.org writes:
> Daniel Ust writes:
> > Speaking of that... How about patents and copyrights on bad ideas to keep
> > them out of circulation?:) Pruning the meme tree? Sounds like an idea for
> > science fiction farce....
>
> I recall a famous case of this a decade back, when someone patented a
> machine to keep a human head alive. The head would be hooked up to a
> heart-lung machine, the blood would go through dialysis, etc. The stated
> intention was to make sure this horrible-sounding technology would never
> be used (at least not for 17 years).
>
> Unfortunately in my searches of the web and of patent databases I have
> not been able to come up with keywords to locate the patent. Does anyone
> know the number or name, or any more details?
Chet Fleming, If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive... (Polinym Press,
1988). 461 pp. Appendices; index. ISBN 0-942287-02-9; LC
87-90566. [$12.95. 33 Berry Oaks, St. Louis MO 63122.]
>From http://www.fplc.edu/riskrevs/rv1.htm#if :
This well produced and very modestly priced hard cover book
was written to generate controversy. Anticipating possible
disruption to his personal life, its author adopted a
pseudonym (or "polinym" --hence the name of the
publisher). However, this was in vain. Premeditated efforts to
generate controversy are apparently regarded as less than
newsworthy. Thus, "Fleming" is now willing to be identified as
Pat Kelly, the author of the paper in [1 Risk 217].
The book explains why he spent a good amount of time and money
to obtain a patent for an invention that he had no intention
to practice. It may be the only one ever to be filed by an
inventor using a pseudonym and is entitled "Device for
Perfusing an Animal Head." The patent is reprinted in its
entirety as Appendix D and, indeed, claims, e.g.:
1. A device for maintaining metabolic activity in a
mammalian head which has been severed from its body at its
neck, comprising the following components...
4. A method... wherein the component which can remove
waste products from the blood is selected from the group
consisting of....
Patents sometime generate controversy, e.g., the "live,
human-made micro-organism" declared by the Supreme Court to
constitute patentable subject matter in Diamond
v. Charkrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980). However, as noted above,
this one was filed for the sole purpose of encouraging early
public attention to an incipient technology --or incipient
technologies generally.
Notwithstanding his narrow point of departure, Kelly deals
broadly with the social control of science and technology and
explores ways in which society can keep some measure of
control without losing the benefits of modern science and
technology -- particularly those of medicine. In fact, there
is further discussion, at 278-97, of "chunking", the topic of
Kelly's contribution to this issue [1 Risk].
If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive... was written for a broad
audience and is likely to be of interest to most readers of
Risk.
See also: http://www.lightlink.com/bbm/whead.html
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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