Controversial brain preservation company Nectome seeks second, more ethical, chance

2-4-2019 brain
Image credit: Pritha Paul

Robert McIntyre would like to get a few things straight. That “waiting list” of people plunking down $10,000 to have his company [Nectome] preserve their brains for future uploading? Just 30 “early supporters” of his research, he said; no one has been promised or even offered anything, certainly not silicon-based mental immortality.

After MIT Technology Review reported in March [2018] that his technology might require death at the speed of assisted suicide, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist stopped collaborating with the company, the university said it has nothing to do with Nectome, and neuroscientists offered little but scorn.

As part of its effort to gain scientific respectability, Nectome recruited University of Oxford philosopher and computational neuroscientist Anders Sandberg to assemble an ethical advisory board and identify issues raised by brain preservation, from how to ensure informed consent from future customers to what happens if a government demands access to someone’s preserved memories.

“You’re going to live your whole life, and all the stuff you built up is going away?” [McIntyre] asked. “All your memories and all your experiences and all your wisdom, erased [by death]? That’s just a bad plan. Screw that.”

Read full, original post: After ghoulish allegations, a brain-preservation company seeks redemption

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