Someday, these conversations will be compared to debates about the how flat
the earth is. (-;
Jeff Taylor
ps- please don't misunderstand the tone of this message.. I intend it to be
a playful jab at generalizations and narrow definitions. {-:
>At 01:49 PM 10/20/97 -0700, someone called jeff wrote:
>
>>How long is the growth cycle? six months? 2 years? 5 years? for a full
>>adult body?
>
>This strikes me as a misconception (so to speak), although an extremely
>pervasive one. On the face of it, the growth cycle for a perfect 16 year
>old young adult human body is 16 years. And it's hard to see how that can
>be achieved without all the sensorimotor interactions a conscious person
>has with the rich physical world, and with other people. The comic book
>picture of healthy and muscular bodies growing suspended in fluid, ready
>for cropping and transplantation, is entirely unhooked from everything we
>know about mammalian developmental processes.
>
>On the other hand, the real kicker in the headless frog embryo story is the
>informed suggestion that we are nearing the point where functioning organs
>can be cultured without requiring a whole body-brain complex to support
>them. I don't see why this should be done drastically faster in vitro than
>a body does it in vivo, but maybe there are ways to tweak the cycle if a
>complete body isn't needed. Other mammals grow big and strong far faster
>than we do, so maybe the latency plateau can be bypassed in decorticate
>preparations.
>
>Damien Broderick