From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Aug 30 1999 - 00:15:31 MDT
> Where are they getting the bodies?
> --
> sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
I guess that the bodies would come from accident victims who had died
due to head injuries. Ideally the brain would flatline and they'd pull
the plug even though the body was still going strong. The dying person
would have to be set up as an organ donor in the usual way, presumably.
Of course it's wasteful to use a whole body when all you want to do is
to keep the head alive. You've got a lot of meat sitting there that's
not doing anybody any good. Plus donating the whole body means you can't
donate hearts and kidneys and whatever organs are transplantable these
days. So from the donor's perspective it is pretty questionable.
I recall about ten years ago someone was going to try to patent the
idea of hooking a head up to a fancy heart/lung/kidney machine to keep
it running, with the stated intention of preventing such an immoral
application of technology by sitting on the patent. If such a device
were possible it would be a superior solution to using donor bodies,
and maybe the patent holder would agree that it was less immoral.
Hal
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