hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> > Where are they getting the bodies?
> > --
> > sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
>
> I guess that the bodies would come from accident victims who had died
> due to head injuries. Ideally the brain would flatline and they'd pull
> the plug even though the body was still going strong. The dying person
> would have to be set up as an organ donor in the usual way, presumably.
>
> Of course it's wasteful to use a whole body when all you want to do is
> to keep the head alive. You've got a lot of meat sitting there that's
> not doing anybody any good. Plus donating the whole body means you can't
> donate hearts and kidneys and whatever organs are transplantable these
> days. So from the donor's perspective it is pretty questionable.
Well, wait a minute. The original head can donate eyes, and the original body can donate kidneys, hearts, and lungs and survive on heart-lung-kidney machines, since the body isn't going to be walking around or anything. For that matter, you could donate arms and legs, though I don't believe we're up to that. And then you could use the rest of the body as a blood-generating machine for the Red Cross. Just a way of giving something back to the community.
"This just can't get more disturbing."