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| Science & Technology |
| After ghoulish allegations, a brain-preservation company seeks redemption |
| 2019-01-31 |
| [STAT] SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO ‐ Robert McIntyre would like to get a few things straight. That "waiting list" of people plunking down $10,000 to have his company 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. It's only 'ghoulish' if you're under 70 and do NOT suffer from an enlarged prostrate, arthritis, occasional gout, multiple dental implants, and male-pattern baldness. The elderly woman in Portland, Ore., whose brain McIntyre obtained (via body-donation company Aeternitas Life) right after her death last year so he could practice his vitrification-cum-cryopreservation technique? Just some early research to improve brain banking, "which we feel we accomplished," he said. Reports that his 3-year-old startup, Nectome, aims to "preserve your brain to bring you back in the future" (according to the website of its venture capital funder) or to "back up your mind," as per a now-disappeared tease on Nectome’s website? "What we’re focused on is preserving long-term memory," insists McIntyre, 30, sitting at a conference table in Nectome’s new, two-room headquarters within shouting distance of San Francisco’s airport, "not reading or decoding it. The field of memory preservation doesn’t exist. We’re trying to create it." It has not been an easy year for McIntyre or Nectome, but they’re determined to claw their way out of scientific purgatory. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 It might be more interesting if they preserve the brains a few days after death, just to see what it's like out there after you die. |
| Posted by: Beau 2019-01-31 23:59 |
| #2 Yeah, but it's the software that counts. Divine spark, perhaps? I don't see freezing doing much to preserve that... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-01-31 09:39 |
| #1 "What we’re focused on is preserving long-term memory," Yesterday and last week should be sufficient. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2019-01-31 09:04 |