8 ms·

Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or s

Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?

pavel_lishin 4mo ago
Well, we know how to make living brains insensate - that's who we all make it through surgery. Presumably they're doing something similar - or using some other well-understood mechanism - to ensure that's not the case. > The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures. Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.
- gavmor 4mo ago
  That’s somewhat overstated. We know anesthesia "works," and we know some of its molecular targets, but we do not fully know the mechanism by which it produces unconsciousness, ie whether anesthesia eliminates experience, or mainly blocks memory, report, and integrated neural processing.
  - duskwuff 4mo ago
    Anesthesia appears to be a fairly broad effect - anaesthetics work on plants, for example [1], even though they lack any neural tissue whatsoever. It would be extremely surprising if those effects were also targeted enough to halt only some types of brain activity. [1]: e.g. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886 https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886
  - gwern 4mo ago
    The most important thing to know about anesthesia in the context of OP is that it often doesn't work. 'Anesthesia awareness' is real and probably more common than we think because anesthesia can easily produce awareness but block memory formation. Keep that in mind when they make arguments about propofol... Which is one of the drugs mentioned in https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-patients-may-be-feeling-painand-mostly-forgetting-it/547439/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-... and https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/neuroscience/pain/anesthesia/2011-noreika.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/neuroscience/pain/anesthesi... https://web.archive.org/web/20120411063647/http://squid314.livejournal.com/260594.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120411063647/http://squid314.l... "What did the doctor say? He told me that they couldn’t up the anesthetic because an overdose could cause respiratory arrest, and that it wouldn’t matter because the anaesthetic on any dose caused severe short term memory loss and whatever happened the patient would forget all about it. The second point, at least, was right on. One patient spent the entire procedure writhing in agony and screaming something incoherent to God. The doctor finished the procedure, took out the endoscope, and cut off the anesthetic, and the patient turned his head, looked the doctor right in the eye, smiled, and said, laughing “Wow, that wasn’t bad at all! Guess I slept right through it!”"
- harimau777 4mo ago
  My understanding was that we now believe that patients under anesthesia are often "awake" but the drugs prevent them from forming memories so they can't complain once the anesthesia wears off. Is that incorrect?
  - sgc 4mo ago
    More like very rarely (1-2 per 1000), very partially aware. I could not find anything saying that it was common, and it appears cases of actual awareness to the point of having pain / trauma are far rarer still. People who have this tend to have foggy memories or other concrete PTSD symptoms after the fact. It does not appear to be the norm. I still think this experimentation is absolutely insane and I strongly object because there is no way to get feedback from the "patient" after the fact. Since we have no real idea of what is happening, I believe we should err on the side of caution. "But they could consent beforehand" is not morally acceptable for intrinsically inhumane actions that take away fundamental human rights and dignity. So if you think this is possibly inhumane / potentially torture, it is an irrelevant point since true consent would be impossible.
  - ziml77 4mo ago
    That's how twilight anesthesia works. That's the kind you get when having something like wisdom tooth removal or an endoscopy. They want you to be responsive to instructions but completely relaxed and unable to form memories of the event.
  - munificent 4mo ago
    "Anesthesia" is a wider umbrella term than most people realize with many levels of sedation. Under "general anesthesia", the patient is completely unconscious. They don't respond to any stimuli. In rare cases, some patients may have an adverse reaction and still retain some sensation, but that's very uncommon. My understanding is that we are certain that patients are actually unconscious (and not just unable to respond) because none of the other involuntary responses to trauma occur during surgery: elevated heart rate, etc. In short, you are simply not there for a while. This is what you get for most kinds of significant surgeries unless the surgery requires you to be awake (like brain surgery where they may need to ask you questions). "Sedation" or "twilight sedation" is a lower level of anesthesia. You are somewhat conscious and can respond to commands from the doctor. But you are unable to form memories of what's happening and you're usually on something like fentanyl that makes you entirely OK with whatever it is they are doing to you. This is common for procedures like colonoscopies and endoscopies where the procedure is somewhat uncomfortable but where you aren't being cut open. In general, anesthesiologists are trying to balance the goal of patient comfort against the risks of deeper levels of sedation.
garethsprice 4mo ago
From the article: > The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures.
- 1234letshaveatw 4mo ago
  I could've done without reading the word almost
  - hypfer 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - wewtyflakes 4mo ago
      > I think it is safe to say that those brains are having a blast How could you possibly say that? You are positing that the brains are both conscious and happy. Both of those are leaps. > It just invokes a strong emotional response because it's so "abnormal" You are making an assumption about why people find this horrifying, and the assumption you made was uncharitable. > OTOH, this is HN, I guess. Having empathy for real people would be harmful to the business model of most people's employers. I do not see how people on HN being horrified by human brain experiments means they do not have empathy.
  - pavel_lishin 4mo ago
    That's before they apply the anaesthetic.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
- Barbing 4mo ago
  I recognized that anesthetic from its famous irresponsible use- "Attention to the risks of off-label use of propofol increased in August 2009, after the release of the Los Angeles County coroner's report that musician Michael Jackson was killed by a mixture of propofol and the benzodiazepine drugs lorazepam, midazolam, and diazepam on 25 June 2009." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol Used properly, however: "To induce general anesthesia, propofol is the drug used almost exclusively, having largely replaced sodium thiopental."
crooked-v 4mo ago
The word "alive" is doing a lot of work here. A brain is pretty much permanently fried after five to fifteen minutes without oxygen, and these are donor brains, not some emergency brain extraction team, so the timeframe will be much longer than that. There might be 'life' left in there in the technical sense, but there's no 'person' left.
EA-3167 4mo ago
It's not a great article, and it glosses over the reality that if you hooked this brain up to an EEG it would show unequivocal brain death. CELLS of the brain are alive, but in terms of being able to function in any sort of coordinated way there that ship sailed minutes after the person who donated their organs died. The wave of depolarization that marks brain death isn't something we can reverse, and what's being done here is all about metabolism and structure rather than those much more subtle functions. IMO the more questionable aspect of this entire operation is the use of "AI" to reach conclusions about how the test molecules are being metabolized, but that's a lot less compelling than implying that some company is somehow preserving life in a disembodied brain.
- genxy 4mo ago
  > isn't something we can reverse Until you hook it up to a lightening rod in the top of a castle!
  - EA-3167 4mo ago
    Just remember to be a good father, or things get really epic in a gothic sort of way.
- DontBreakAlex 4mo ago
  Everyone upvote this guy more, thanks
- mikeweiss 4mo ago
  So your saying you would be comfortable putting yourself on the donor list then?
  - EA-3167 4mo ago
    Sure, the key point here is that you die first. Squeamishness is for the living, who have increasingly desperate need of neurological medicines.
kreyenborgi 4mo ago
Reminds me of a certain scene from Knausgård's Morning Star.
koolba 4mo ago
> Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. There’s no such thing as live dissection. It’s vivisection.
dostick 4mo ago
Brain does not have physical feelings, and with all other feelings cut off and not possible, even with consciousness it won’t be a horror scenario like in MetallicA’s “One”.
- ceejayoz 4mo ago
  People go crazy in solitary confinement, and they at least have senses left. I’m not sure I’m as confident as you on this one.
cj 4mo ago
I’ll volunteer to waive my rights here. Feel free to do whatever you wish with my brain once it’s detached from my body :) Can’t be worse than my organs being harvested for donation.
rendx 4mo ago
It's still an open debate whether the seat of consciousness (or even simpler, perception) is the brain. see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body. see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877 https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory
- echelon_musk 4mo ago
  See also: Hridaya.
- raffael_de 4mo ago
  I believe to some extent that everything is conscious and that it's specifically our species' prized mental features that lessen it's level at least temporarily. purely esoterically the statement "a rock is more conscious than a human being" doesn't even seem too outrageous to me.
- ywain 4mo ago
  Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.
  - rendx 4mo ago
    You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness. I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.
dhosek 4mo ago
When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment. ⸻ 1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me because I was shaking too much for them to operate so I was unconscious for the whole thing.
- thih9 4mo ago
  > so I was unconscious for the whole thing Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.
  - dhosek 4mo ago
    The doctor who did the surgery was arguably the best doctor I’ve ever interacted with in my 57 years of life. He was horrible at starting appointments on time (much to the frustration of his staff) because he would spend as long as he felt necessary with each patient, regardless of what the scheduled appointment length was. He was essentially at war with insurance companies about coverage limitations (for the procedure, a stapedectomy, insurance companies wanted to have this be an outpatient procedure but he felt it was better for patients not to have to be in a car immediately after surgery so he informed patients beforehand that they would be checking in as an outpatient and he would declare complications after surgery that required an overnight hospital stay. Similarly, the antibiotic that the insurance companies had as their preferred formulary had a tendency to kill hair cells which made it a bad choice for in-ear application. All of his patients were advised that they had an allergy to this antibiotic and thus would have to be prescribed his preferred antibiotic). So, with this doctor, if he told me that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe him without reservation.
- yoyohello13 4mo ago
  Purely anecdotal, but I had surgery a few years ago (relatively minor). But I could feel for months after a sort of 'unconscious PSTD' I don't know how else to describe it. Even after it was healed and the pain was gone, there was just a deep sense of 'something bad happened in there' feeling. I'd have dreams of someone digging around in my body. Anyway, it's all gone now, but a weird experience for sure.
rootsudo 4mo ago
This, exactly. Every other part of the human body is understandable but the brain. Reading the article and imagining its you, sheeeeesh. I really wonder how this passed ethical review. Yes the brain is an organ, and yes there’s probably consent and the body is officially proclaimed dead and this is near the best way to really extrapolate the empirical data prior to alive human trials. But damn this article is a combination of words I did not want to read today nor imagine.
Balgair 4mo ago
To add to the discussion in the comments: There is also the practice of not using anesthesia on infants when undergoing medical surgery. Anesthesia is hard to do even on adults, harder on children, and very difficult on infants. Not accidentally killing one is quite hard. So, for a long time we just didn't. I think some countries still don't, but can't remember. The idea really gets back all the way to philosophy. If you can't remember if you were in pain, did you get hurt? And then you add in the medical problem itself, the duty to do no harm, the difficulties, etc. The conclusion was to just not use pain meds.

pavel_lishin 4mo ago

Well, we know how to make living brains insensate - that's who we all make it through surgery. Presumably they're doing something similar - or using some other well-understood mechanism - to ensure that's not the case. > The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures. Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.

gavmor 4mo ago
That’s somewhat overstated. We know anesthesia "works," and we know some of its molecular targets, but we do not fully know the mechanism by which it produces unconsciousness, ie whether anesthesia eliminates experience, or mainly blocks memory, report, and integrated neural processing.
- duskwuff 4mo ago
  Anesthesia appears to be a fairly broad effect - anaesthetics work on plants, for example [1], even though they lack any neural tissue whatsoever. It would be extremely surprising if those effects were also targeted enough to halt only some types of brain activity. [1]: e.g. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886 https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886
- gwern 4mo ago
  The most important thing to know about anesthesia in the context of OP is that it often doesn't work. 'Anesthesia awareness' is real and probably more common than we think because anesthesia can easily produce awareness but block memory formation. Keep that in mind when they make arguments about propofol... Which is one of the drugs mentioned in https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-patients-may-be-feeling-painand-mostly-forgetting-it/547439/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-... and https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/neuroscience/pain/anesthesia/2011-noreika.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/neuroscience/pain/anesthesi... https://web.archive.org/web/20120411063647/http://squid314.livejournal.com/260594.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120411063647/http://squid314.l... "What did the doctor say? He told me that they couldn’t up the anesthetic because an overdose could cause respiratory arrest, and that it wouldn’t matter because the anaesthetic on any dose caused severe short term memory loss and whatever happened the patient would forget all about it. The second point, at least, was right on. One patient spent the entire procedure writhing in agony and screaming something incoherent to God. The doctor finished the procedure, took out the endoscope, and cut off the anesthetic, and the patient turned his head, looked the doctor right in the eye, smiled, and said, laughing “Wow, that wasn’t bad at all! Guess I slept right through it!”"
harimau777 4mo ago
My understanding was that we now believe that patients under anesthesia are often "awake" but the drugs prevent them from forming memories so they can't complain once the anesthesia wears off. Is that incorrect?
- sgc 4mo ago
  More like very rarely (1-2 per 1000), very partially aware. I could not find anything saying that it was common, and it appears cases of actual awareness to the point of having pain / trauma are far rarer still. People who have this tend to have foggy memories or other concrete PTSD symptoms after the fact. It does not appear to be the norm. I still think this experimentation is absolutely insane and I strongly object because there is no way to get feedback from the "patient" after the fact. Since we have no real idea of what is happening, I believe we should err on the side of caution. "But they could consent beforehand" is not morally acceptable for intrinsically inhumane actions that take away fundamental human rights and dignity. So if you think this is possibly inhumane / potentially torture, it is an irrelevant point since true consent would be impossible.
- ziml77 4mo ago
  That's how twilight anesthesia works. That's the kind you get when having something like wisdom tooth removal or an endoscopy. They want you to be responsive to instructions but completely relaxed and unable to form memories of the event.
- munificent 4mo ago
  "Anesthesia" is a wider umbrella term than most people realize with many levels of sedation. Under "general anesthesia", the patient is completely unconscious. They don't respond to any stimuli. In rare cases, some patients may have an adverse reaction and still retain some sensation, but that's very uncommon. My understanding is that we are certain that patients are actually unconscious (and not just unable to respond) because none of the other involuntary responses to trauma occur during surgery: elevated heart rate, etc. In short, you are simply not there for a while. This is what you get for most kinds of significant surgeries unless the surgery requires you to be awake (like brain surgery where they may need to ask you questions). "Sedation" or "twilight sedation" is a lower level of anesthesia. You are somewhat conscious and can respond to commands from the doctor. But you are unable to form memories of what's happening and you're usually on something like fentanyl that makes you entirely OK with whatever it is they are doing to you. This is common for procedures like colonoscopies and endoscopies where the procedure is somewhat uncomfortable but where you aren't being cut open. In general, anesthesiologists are trying to balance the goal of patient comfort against the risks of deeper levels of sedation.

garethsprice 4mo ago

From the article: > The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures.

1234letshaveatw 4mo ago
I could've done without reading the word almost
- hypfer 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - wewtyflakes 4mo ago
    > I think it is safe to say that those brains are having a blast How could you possibly say that? You are positing that the brains are both conscious and happy. Both of those are leaps. > It just invokes a strong emotional response because it's so "abnormal" You are making an assumption about why people find this horrifying, and the assumption you made was uncharitable. > OTOH, this is HN, I guess. Having empathy for real people would be harmful to the business model of most people's employers. I do not see how people on HN being horrified by human brain experiments means they do not have empathy.
- pavel_lishin 4mo ago
  That's before they apply the anaesthetic.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
Barbing 4mo ago
I recognized that anesthetic from its famous irresponsible use- "Attention to the risks of off-label use of propofol increased in August 2009, after the release of the Los Angeles County coroner's report that musician Michael Jackson was killed by a mixture of propofol and the benzodiazepine drugs lorazepam, midazolam, and diazepam on 25 June 2009." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol Used properly, however: "To induce general anesthesia, propofol is the drug used almost exclusively, having largely replaced sodium thiopental."

crooked-v 4mo ago

The word "alive" is doing a lot of work here. A brain is pretty much permanently fried after five to fifteen minutes without oxygen, and these are donor brains, not some emergency brain extraction team, so the timeframe will be much longer than that. There might be 'life' left in there in the technical sense, but there's no 'person' left.

EA-3167 4mo ago

It's not a great article, and it glosses over the reality that if you hooked this brain up to an EEG it would show unequivocal brain death. CELLS of the brain are alive, but in terms of being able to function in any sort of coordinated way there that ship sailed minutes after the person who donated their organs died. The wave of depolarization that marks brain death isn't something we can reverse, and what's being done here is all about metabolism and structure rather than those much more subtle functions. IMO the more questionable aspect of this entire operation is the use of "AI" to reach conclusions about how the test molecules are being metabolized, but that's a lot less compelling than implying that some company is somehow preserving life in a disembodied brain.

genxy 4mo ago
> isn't something we can reverse Until you hook it up to a lightening rod in the top of a castle!
- EA-3167 4mo ago
  Just remember to be a good father, or things get really epic in a gothic sort of way.
DontBreakAlex 4mo ago
Everyone upvote this guy more, thanks
mikeweiss 4mo ago
So your saying you would be comfortable putting yourself on the donor list then?
- EA-3167 4mo ago
  Sure, the key point here is that you die first. Squeamishness is for the living, who have increasingly desperate need of neurological medicines.

kreyenborgi 4mo ago

Reminds me of a certain scene from Knausgård's Morning Star.

koolba 4mo ago

> Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. There’s no such thing as live dissection. It’s vivisection.

dostick 4mo ago

Brain does not have physical feelings, and with all other feelings cut off and not possible, even with consciousness it won’t be a horror scenario like in MetallicA’s “One”.

ceejayoz 4mo ago
People go crazy in solitary confinement, and they at least have senses left. I’m not sure I’m as confident as you on this one.

cj 4mo ago

I’ll volunteer to waive my rights here. Feel free to do whatever you wish with my brain once it’s detached from my body :) Can’t be worse than my organs being harvested for donation.

rendx 4mo ago

It's still an open debate whether the seat of consciousness (or even simpler, perception) is the brain. see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body. see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877 https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory

echelon_musk 4mo ago
See also: Hridaya.
raffael_de 4mo ago
I believe to some extent that everything is conscious and that it's specifically our species' prized mental features that lessen it's level at least temporarily. purely esoterically the statement "a rock is more conscious than a human being" doesn't even seem too outrageous to me.
ywain 4mo ago
Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.
- rendx 4mo ago
  You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness. I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.

dhosek 4mo ago

When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment. ⸻ 1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me because I was shaking too much for them to operate so I was unconscious for the whole thing.

thih9 4mo ago
> so I was unconscious for the whole thing Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.
- dhosek 4mo ago
  The doctor who did the surgery was arguably the best doctor I’ve ever interacted with in my 57 years of life. He was horrible at starting appointments on time (much to the frustration of his staff) because he would spend as long as he felt necessary with each patient, regardless of what the scheduled appointment length was. He was essentially at war with insurance companies about coverage limitations (for the procedure, a stapedectomy, insurance companies wanted to have this be an outpatient procedure but he felt it was better for patients not to have to be in a car immediately after surgery so he informed patients beforehand that they would be checking in as an outpatient and he would declare complications after surgery that required an overnight hospital stay. Similarly, the antibiotic that the insurance companies had as their preferred formulary had a tendency to kill hair cells which made it a bad choice for in-ear application. All of his patients were advised that they had an allergy to this antibiotic and thus would have to be prescribed his preferred antibiotic). So, with this doctor, if he told me that the moon was made of green cheese, I would believe him without reservation.
yoyohello13 4mo ago
Purely anecdotal, but I had surgery a few years ago (relatively minor). But I could feel for months after a sort of 'unconscious PSTD' I don't know how else to describe it. Even after it was healed and the pain was gone, there was just a deep sense of 'something bad happened in there' feeling. I'd have dreams of someone digging around in my body. Anyway, it's all gone now, but a weird experience for sure.

rootsudo 4mo ago

This, exactly. Every other part of the human body is understandable but the brain. Reading the article and imagining its you, sheeeeesh. I really wonder how this passed ethical review. Yes the brain is an organ, and yes there’s probably consent and the body is officially proclaimed dead and this is near the best way to really extrapolate the empirical data prior to alive human trials. But damn this article is a combination of words I did not want to read today nor imagine.

Balgair 4mo ago

To add to the discussion in the comments: There is also the practice of not using anesthesia on infants when undergoing medical surgery. Anesthesia is hard to do even on adults, harder on children, and very difficult on infants. Not accidentally killing one is quite hard. So, for a long time we just didn't. I think some countries still don't, but can't remember. The idea really gets back all the way to philosophy. If you can't remember if you were in pain, did you get hurt? And then you add in the medical problem itself, the duty to do no harm, the difficulties, etc. The conclusion was to just not use pain meds.