Ethical Applications of Testing "Brains in a Vat"

[Manthor]

An intellectual exercise but what are the ethical implications of a case in which we were to clone a brain in a vat and then perform tests upon them and other experiments - say injecting them with multiple drugs, doing all sorts of pharmaceutical testing or mucking about with their genes, grafting or splicing something to living human tissue and whatnot?

Would a brain in a jar even have a consciousness? Would it violate any ethical codes because essentially wouldn't we be just performing experiements upon a collection of neural tissue and not a living being?

Your thoughts please.

[Seggybop]

That's obviously the same as cloning a complete human and experimenting on them-- that is, completely unethical. A living human brain IS a person, the rest of the body is just support/interface.

[Darth Tedious]

That's obviously the same as cloning a complete human and experimenting on them-- that is, completely unethical.

I would say it's more like cloning a single organ, but still just as unethical.

A living human brain IS a person, the rest of the body is just support/interface.

Again, I disagree on wording, I would say that it is the consciousness that makes the person. But again, I share the same general sentiment.

To add a further thought, unless you are doing research which would save many lives (by finding a brain cancer cure, for example) as opposed to just experimenting mad-scientist style (which your OP seems to hint at), it would be more enethical than cloning a whole human for the express purpose of organ harvest. Which seems to be a frowned-upon idea.

[Seggybop]

...do you have any idea of the function of a brain as compared to any other organ? Are you seriously implying a brain is no more intrinsic to individual identity as a human than a spleen or liver?

You can swap someone's spleen out and they're still the same person. You can [theoretically] chop someone's head out and hook it to a machine to keep it alive, and you've still got the same human being there. However, swap the brain and that person would be gone.

You are a brain. It is literally the single essential component that makes you ~you~

Growing a brain in a tank is equivalent to raising a complete human child in total sensory deprivation/isolation-- already highly unethical by itself, before you even get into any further experimentation.

[Darth Tedious]

I did say the consciousness makes the person. The fact that the brain is the seat of that consciousness is quite relevant. However, the OP asked a valid question: "Would a brain in a jar even have consciousness." This point is the only reason I made the comparison to a single organ. If the brain in the jar does not have consciousness, then it is only an organ.

I agree with the ethical stance you're taking, but must question this point:

Growing a brain in a tank is equivalent to raising a complete human child in total sensory deprivation/isolation-- already highly unethical by itself, before you even get into any further experimentation.

Without knowing whether or not the B in a J actually does have consciousness, it is impossible to say if it is equivalent to raising a child in sensory deprevation.
Of course, proving that the BiaJ has consciousness would be almost impossible...

There is a can of worms that could be opened here about whether braindead vegetables are still people.

[someone_else]

Would a brain in a jar even have a consciousness?

If you want it to be useful for research it must be as similar as possible to brains in meat bodies, so yes, it will have a consciousness.

The above means that you have to grow it "properly" by having it experience a childhood and possibly adulthood. How you do that is up to you. Either by giving it a fake body to interact with people (knowing it is a brain in a jar or not) or (better) a Matrix-like computer simulation, possibly with other brains in a jar.
The point is that realistic sensory feed is necessary for correct brain growth, especially in humans. If you don't feed it the right stimuli, it doesn't become a brain in the first place. Which makes pointless any research on it.

Just to point out the obvious: stealing brains is NOT going to be good for your criminal record, and dead brains are useless unless harvested and placed in the "jar" within minutes from the death.

Would it violate any ethical codes because essentially wouldn't we be just performing experiements upon a collection of neural tissue and not a living being?

It all comes down to the definition of "human being" you have. From a purely technical standpoint, that's an organ and not a complete human being. Even if you manage to not having it considered it a "human being" with sophistry and bribery to politicians, it remains sapient nontheless, so it is a "person".
This fact, is going to raise lots of eyebrows.
PETA and Pro-Life people will eat your ass for sure.

But you can always split it in pieces and test stuff on each piece separately. What keeps us from using that approach is that growing full organs without the rest of the organism supporting it is still somewhat out of reach (but is getting closer).

[Darth Tedious]

If you want it to be useful for research it must be as similar as possible to brains in meat bodies, so yes, it will have a consciousness.

Wouldn't that depend on what sort of research you were doing?

[someone_else]

Wouldn't that depend on what sort of research you were doing?

As "higher functions" grow, their interactions shapes the growth of the rest of the brain. Without "higher functions", motor areas will not develop correctly (if at all), and sensory areas will underperform badly.
What kinds of useful research can you do on such meat wreck (it ain't a brain)? Very little that cannot be performed in vitro for a fraction of the cost.

You could grow a very mentally retarded brain in a jar, that is the limit of how crappy "higher functions" can get without impairing the development of other areas (more or less anyway). But will still be sapient under any standard, albeit dumb as a brick wall, so you're not solving the ethical problem and PETA will still eat your ass.

[Darth Tedious]

Wouldn't that depend on what sort of research you were doing?

As "higher functions" grow, their interactions shapes the growth of the rest of the brain. Without "higher functions", motor areas will not develop correctly (if at all), and sensory areas will underperform badly.
What kinds of useful research can you do on such meat wreck (it ain't a brain)? Very little that cannot be performed in vitro for a fraction of the cost.

You could grow a very mentally retarded brain in a jar, that is the limit of how crappy "higher functions" can get without impairing the development of other areas (more or less anyway). But will still be sapient under any standard, albeit dumb as a brick wall, so you're not solving the ethical problem and PETA will still eat your ass.

I didn't think for a second that it would solve the ethical problem. Do you need higher function to test things like growing a brain in a jar, giving it cancer and then working on curing it?

And can anyone answer the question of whether the BiaJ would be conscious?

[someone_else]

Do you need higher function to test things like growing a brain in a jar, giving it cancer and then working on curing it?

You shouldn't need a brain in a jar to do that. Working on the right kind of neural tissue or on cell cultures of neural tissue provides the same capabilities at a fractional cost and technical difficulty.
Cancer is a problem that happens at cellular level, and doesn't give a fuck of how the surrounding tissue is shaped and connected. The damage it deals is mainly by mechanical pressure while growing (very easy to figure out), so you don't need to work on cancers in their own environment (the brain in this case) to do meaningful research.

[Darth Tedious]

Do you need higher function to test things like growing a brain in a jar, giving it cancer and then working on curing it?

You shouldn't need a brain in a jar to do that. Working on the right kind of neural tissue or on cell cultures of neural tissue provides the same capabilities at a fractional cost and technical difficulty.
Cancer is a problem that happens at cellular level, and doesn't give a fuck of how the surrounding tissue is shaped and connected. The damage it deals is mainly by mechanical pressure while growing (very easy to figure out), so you don't need to work on cancers in their own environment (the brain in this case) to do meaningful research.

Thankyou for the clear answer.

I must ask a further question (and this is pretty irrelevant to the actual ethics of the situation, but I'm wondering), how would a brain in a vat with no sensory input develop sapience?

[someone_else]

how would a brain in a vat with no sensory input develop sapience?

Assuming the "vat" is just life-support machinery (magical stuff keeping the organ alive and nothing else), it wouldn't become either a brain nor sapient.

Sensing the world and acting on the world is necessary for correct brain development. Total sensor deprivation will yeld useless neural tissue that isn't a brain nor sapient.
As I said in posts above, you need to "grow" it properly, by giving it the right stimuli (something like expriencing a childhood and adulthood at least) to have something you can then call "a brain".
This will make it a sapient being (if it's a human brain) at the same time.

[Darth Tedious]

how would a brain in a vat with no sensory input develop sapience?

Assuming the "vat" is just life-support machinery (magical stuff keeping the organ alive and nothing else), it wouldn't become either a brain nor sapient.

Sensing the world and acting on the world is necessary for correct brain development. Total sensor deprivation will yeld useless neural tissue that isn't a brain nor sapient.
As I said in posts above, you need to "grow" it properly, by giving it the right stimuli (something like expriencing a childhood and adulthood at least) to have something you can then call "a brain".
This will make it a sapient being (if it's a human brain) at the same time.

Thankyou again.
In the context of the OP, this would mean that the pure brain in a vat would literally be no more than a lump of neural tissue, and as such not have so much bad ethical karma- but also (as you point out) that it would be almost completely useless for meaningful research.

[someone_else]

Yes.

An addendum to a previous post. (pratically nitpicking myself)

you don't need to work on cancers in their own environment (the brain in this case) to do meaningful research.

The "jar" life support machinery itself could be useful though. Cancers grow up to a tiny size and then start to ask politely for blood vessels to the surrounding tissues.
In a living body, these blood vessels form and provide oxygen and nutrients to let the cancer resume growing up to damage-dealing size and beyond.
In a cell culture, no blood vessel forms for obvious reasons (there is no blood either). This locks the cancers studied in-vitro in a starting-up stage.
If you provide it blood vessels from your magical "jar", then you can study the cancer as it keeps growing in the lump of tissue in the vat. That would be useful for research.

Still, this scenario requires just the "vat" machinery and some random neural tissue for the cancer to grow in, a full brain is unnecessary.

Also, the vat machinery would be useful to grow cloned replacement organs without the fuss of growing a full human clone, but I'm getting on a tangent here...

[Manthor]

Assuming no input and we get lumps of neural tissue as the result of cloning them, would it get past a contemporary ethics board? No human rights are being violated in any sense of the word and it's simply a lump of tissue I would take it. Aside from opposition from theologians and religious groups and individuals of course.

[krakonfour]

From what I know, total sensory deprivation leads to an incomplete brain...parts unused start to regress and the brain is much more vulnerable to cancers, malformations and such when its genes tell it to give up on neural tissue (otherwise energy-devoring stuff in a full body) not necessary for survival.
These effects have been observed in russian orphan babies who don't have mothers that SPEAK to them, that stare at the same cieling all day long and all they know are screams of other babies (corresponding increased death rate). Multiply effects by several orders of magnitudes for a brain that not only has never known anything, ever, but doesn't even have its own body to interact with (hunger? Hot,cold? Pain? wut?)