Something to Ponder.

edited February 2015 in Everything else
Here's a little conundrum I thought up the other day. 

If you were dying of an unknown disease which caused total organ failure, disregarding cost(For now), how would you use the technology available to the modern medical and scientific community to keep yourself alive, whilst maintaining the ability to be relatively active in society (In other words, not hooked up to a roomful of machinery 24/7? 

Comments

  • Using just current technology or potential technology based on current ones?

    Because the latter I can see some sort of brain-network interface which allows connection from your brain to your sensors/limbs/body via wifi, where separate conceptual parts have both been done successfully (the hooking up the nervous system to a wifi bit and the directly connecting the nervous system to bionic sensors/limbs bit).

    So long as we have some sort of method of keeping the brain alive it becomes irrelevant whether you are actually hooked up to the machine 24/7 because you can connect to your body via wireless.
  • I was thinking more along the lines of the former. Though neurointerfaces could be useful, if you used them to reduce the amount of tissue the disease had to multiply with.
  • Well, the question would be, with the tech that we have at this moment, how long can we keep the brain alive in the first place as the organs fail one by one? 

    Even if we hook up the body entirely with machines, given that most of our tech is designed around supporting organ function as opposed to replacing them entirely, it's not going to work very well.
  • I think the answer would boil down to making a system by which to keep the brain alive and healthy while allowing it control over a replacement machine body.  I mean I don't know Dwayne Dibbly about Neurobiology, but doesn't it really just take some blood, nutrients, and hormones? We got a brain doctor in the house? (Please correct me if so. I'd rather be less wrong than polish my ego.) There is now artificial blood. Nutrients shouldn't be hard to figure out. Hormones and proper use might get harry, but then it would just be a matter of that interfacing, which was mentioned beforehand. Just seems like it would almost be easier to keep the brain alive and have an android surrogate body for that whole active social life thing. I mean, would it really take the people that WOULD accept semi-immortal wirelessly controlled humanoids to actually get used to them? Especially once they began to see friends and family benefiting? I wonder if it would be terribly dissimilar to how we've handled LGBT issues as a society. Just some food for though on that something to ponder I guess.
Sign In or Register to comment.