My husband and I did a bunch of errands on Friday, and listened to a lot of NPR in the car. There was a brief story that reminded both my husband and I of previous (and absolutely fascinating) NPR stories about organoids that we had each independently listened to. Awhile ago, I had put organoids on my list of possible blog entries in the future (I call this my "runners-up" list and I use it to inspire me especially on days when I have difficulty finding something uniquely delightful). So this is it, my long awaited blog about the organoids. I sat down to research and to listen to all those NPR stories, and I am so full of delight (and information) about this new piece of science that borders on science fiction.
In 2008, researchers learned how to create "cerebral organoids" (which I call "baby brains", most media calls them "mini-brains" but scientists really prefer the term "cerebral organoids" because as UC San Diego professor and neuroscientist Alysson Muotri explained, "We don't want to give the impression that what we have is a fully mature organized brain.")
Cerebral organoids are clusters of living brain cells usually created by transforming skin cells from a person into neural stem cells which self-organize into brainlike structures with electrically active neurons. Carl Zimmer, science writer for the New York Times, was interviewed on "On Point" the other day, and explained the process incredibly well: "[Scientists] can take just a little skin sample from you, put it in a dish, break up the skin cells, hit them with some chemicals. That basically reprograms the skin cells to become like cells in an embryo that can become any tissue. They hit them with some more chemicals and turn them into neurons. These are like neurons in your brain. In fact, they're neurons like in a developing embryonic brain, and they start to grow and divide, grow and divide. And they form structures much like in a human brain, and they start giving off what look, in many ways, like brain waves. And as the organoids get older, these brain waves get more organized."
These baby brain blobs of cells are no bigger than a pea, but hold enormous promise for improving our understanding of the brain. Scientists have already used organoids to make discoveries about schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and the microcephaly caused by the Zika virus.
What fascinates me about these baby brains are the possible ethical dilemmas.
Zimmer said of the organoids, "They can, quote-unquote, live for years, it seems. Giving off these signals, feeding on food that the scientists give them. What are these? Are these alive? Do we consider them a human life? What are they?"
So many questions arise! Can these organoids feel pain? Can they gain consciousness? Are they self-aware? Will they suffer? Are experiments on them experienced as torture? Already, even as just teeny tiny pea-sized clumps of cells, these brain organoids are demonstrating coordinated electrical activity among their neurons. How much of this coordinated activity is necessary to deem "living" beings?
These are questions that bioethicists are starting to raise. (They even formed the new "Brainstorm Project", an NIH-funded project that brings ethicists and scientists together to discuss brain organoid research, and 17 scientists, ethicists, and philosophers posed these questions recently in a commentary in the journal "Nature".)
Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in ethical and legal issues in the biosciences, has said of the organoid, “In order for it to be a good model, you want it to be as human as possible. But the more human it gets, the more you’re backing into the same sorts of ethics questions that are the reasons why you can’t just use living humans.”
After describing the organoids on "On Point", Zimmer postures an example that definitely creates these ethical questions, "What if we connected a retina to one of these things so now it can perceive light? What then? What if you start flashing signals at it? Can it learn those patterns? What then?" Meghna Chakrabarti responds, "Does that not amaze you? I'm blown away!" Me too, Meghna, me too!
Of course, how can you not think of Star Trek when considering these organoids? Even Muotri connected his research to Star Trek, saying, "It's no surprise that some of the experiments that we have here were inspired by an episode of Star Trek," including the inspiration to attach an organoid to a robot. "The robot is using the brain organoid to coordinate the four legs. By having the robot explore the environment, we are continuously stimulating these organoids and our hope is that as we do, the organoids will mature because now they are receiving some kind of input information."
I immediately thought of both Data and Odo, Star Trek characters who are ambiguously and uniquely "alive" in the series. When Odo was first found, he was just a clump of goo and was subjected to all kinds of awful experiments from which he definitely suffered. And Data had to fight in court to prove that he not only was "alive" but had rights like other living beings.
Another fun example, Data fought for the "lives" of a computer program of "exocomps" that had evolved to make choices. In that Star Trek episode "Quality of Life", Data asks what it means to be alive. Dr Crusher responds, "Life is what enables plants and animals to consume food, derive energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings and reproduce."
Zimmer and Chakrabarti dance around the question of what it means to be alive and listed several possible hallmarks of "life" including metabolism, sentience, reproduction, self-awareness, and/or homeostasis (many of the same hallmarks Crusher outlined), but then also provided many examples of living things that are exceptions to requirements of "life". Data wondered about these hallmarks in consideration of his own "alive-ness": "I do not grow. I do not reproduce. Yet I am considered to be alive." My favorite example is one Zimmer gives to refute the requirement that reproduction is fundamental to being alive: "A Nobel Prize winning physiologist named Albert Szent-Györgyi in the 1940s said, 'Ok fine, well what about a rabbit? Just one rabbit, can't reproduce, therefore not alive?'"
Zimmer also considers how would we know if an organoid, for example, is or isn't self-aware, especially since we can't (yet?) communicate with it (just like Odo could not communicate with the scientists experimenting on him). That makes me think about what we consider "life" on other planets, like Mars, and why I appreciate the stipulation "life, as we know it".
And my favorite creepy sci fi quote that I found within this subject of baby brains was from Muotri: "How do we know that we are the way we are and we are not brain organoids in a brain farm just receiving some artificial stimulus like in 'The Matrix,' right?"
Right?!?
With delight (and a little creepy sci fi fear!),
♥Jamie
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