[ethanrutherford]

This makes me feel physically ill. It's like something straight out of a sci-fi dystopia, how did this get approved? Who determined that reinjecting biological activity into a human brain is definitely not some form of reanimation? If they're using heavy sedation to prevent electrical activity, is that not tacit admission they're not 100% sure that consciousness might return otherwise? How did this pass ethics review, or did they even bother?

[willis936]

Approved? Ethics review? This is a private company. I was shocked when NYT Daily casually mentioned this exact behavior at Altos last week and just laughed it off. Like what is funny about making infinite torture machines because billionaires want to live forever?

[DontBreakAlex]

[flagged]

[wanoir]

This is an interesting point

I think for direct comparison, the way of re-animating the brain described in the article would need to be attempted on the cardiac arrest patient as well so as to be sure it isn’t a “revival”-capable method

Might already be an obvious answer to practitioners in the field

[DontBreakAlex]

My understanding is that after a few minutes without oxygen, the chemistry inside your brain is "fucked up" and even if you get oxygen back it's gone, you're already a vegetable. I like to think that "the state of the machine is gone" but I'm not a doctor

[wanoir]

> even if you get oxygen back it's gone, you're already a vegetable

I think that's the part that might get people though. Since a comatose brain is not necessarily fully gone

So I guess the question is what differentiates a comatose brain from one that is no longer capable of consciousness?

[tomhow]

Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html