Hank Greely

So that's a great question.

And I'm not a scientist.

I am a lawyer, a law professor.

The scientists think that there is a chance that they can do it.

And in fact, they've already produced some mice that both Nicalchi and there's at least one company in this space in the Bay Area have claimed to produce mice that have no heads.

Now these mice die as soon as they're born,

but they hope to get better at it.

We don't know first whether we'll be able to do this, and we don't know second, even if we do do this, does a mouse with no head tell us much about mice with heads, let alone about humans with heads?

So there's both the problem of can we make it work at all, and how relevant is it for human health?

And the answers to that are we don't know.

Is there any way of knowing it absolutely, positively, not any conceivable doubt?

No, but that's true about just about everything in this world.

We think, and we think we have good reasons to think, that without brains, there's no consciousness, there's no brain, there's no pain, there's no perception at all, that brains are crucial to perceiving the world.

And we see some

We think with people who have had severe traumatic brain injuries or strokes or other things so that their brains aren't functioning, they don't seem to respond to anything.

And further, we have this concept of brain death.

If your brain is not firing, if nothing in your brain is working,

will consider you dead, even if your heart is beating and your lungs, thanks to a ventilator, are putting oxygen through your system.

So we're pretty sure that brains are crucial.

Can anyone prove that beyond any doubt?