Next week, Nectome will make its presentation in society. As part of the Y Combinator acceleration program, Robert McIntyre and Michael McCanna will have two minutes to 'sell' their idea: an embalming system capable of preserving a human body for years. Brain included.
No kidding: last year they won, the Brain Preservation Foundation acknowledged McIntyre's work to preserve, with surprising precision, the brain of a pig. There is only one problem: for the method to work, the brain needs to be fresh.
A disturbing step forward in cryogenics
With the support of research grants from the US government and in the center of Silicon Valley, Nectome is raising a lot of expectation. To this day, and despite the fact that the system is tremendously experimental, there are already 25 people who have paid $ 10,000 to put themselves on the waiting list.
How does it work? We have few details: According to the MIT Technology Review, his idea is to start the embalming process while the terminal patients are still alive. To do this, they have studied the legislation of assisted suicide in California and are convinced that it would be legally possible.
At least 25 people have already paid the $ 10,000 needed to be on the waiting list.
Try it, they're trying seriously. The ethical problems (but that) has not stopped them: in February, they did the first test in an Oregon laboratory. They used the corpse of an old woman and started the process two and a half hours after her death.
Without a doubt, the approach is disturbing. Above all, because no matter how well they manage to do the process of preserving the brain, nothing guarantees that it will work.