breeding of anencephalic humans for organ transplants

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YippySkippy
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05 Feb 2013, 3:32 pm

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Female anencephalics are artificially fertilized by male anencephalics, and the fetuses will be also anencephalic. We block the development of the brain at a genetic level, they never have a brain, we don't remove there brain.

What do you propose to do with all the "accidental" normal fetuses?

naturalplastic
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05 Feb 2013, 3:51 pm

visagrunt wrote:

Utterly and completely stupid.

I say that from a practical, medical, legal and ethical perspective. The only realm in which I see this as practical is the realm of science fiction.

The suggestion about about leaving the rostral end of the neural tube open requires microscopic surgery at a very specific window of opportunity. 23 to 26 days post coception will mean 37 to 40 days gestational age. Many women may not even be aware that they are pregnant at this point. So for greater certainty we would have to rely exclusively on fetuses conceived in vitro. But in these cases, we would have to rely upon implantation--which is not always successful--and then the implanted fetus would have to be located, and surgically altered. The embryo will be less than 5 mm long. Within this embryo, a surgeon will need to open a hole the size of a hair. Surgical alteration of the neural tube sufficient to cause anencephaly, but not so grievous as to kill the embryo is, practically speaking, impossible.

I have irreconcilable ethical concerns with this. At implantation, such a fetus is--barring evidence to the contrary, a living human organism, with full potential to survive. And while I would have absolutely no reservations about terminating the pregnancy before the threshhold of viability, I have very grave reservations about inflicting deliberate surgical injury with the clear intention of carrying the child to term. What if the injury does not produce anencephaly, but some other, lesser neural tube defect? What if, instead of the expected neural tube defect, the injury produces an unexpected consequence, like microcephaly? How many iterations are parents likely to go through before hitting upon winning donor fetus?

The notion of doing so gentically does not present much prospect of sucess, in my view. While there is some evidence to suggest a genetic link, it is not at all clear that there is any genetic marker that can be identified. Far more likely is that a complex of genetic circumstances present conditions which inhibit neural tube closure.

But supposing we could take these steps, then next question is the practicality of this as a therapeutic source. Ideally, if you have an infant who needs transplant, your ideal solution is to have the parents conceive another child as the source. Well, that's a nine-month process. Actually, it's a lot longer than that. Because first we have to embark on egg harvesting. And then we have to embark on fertilization and implantation. And we have to hope that implantation is successful the first time. And we have to hope that neural tube closure is successfully prevented. And let's not forget the need for the donor fetus to be a tissue match for the child who needs transplant; just because they are genetic siblings does not guarantee that result.

But assum we have successfully negotiated all of these hurdles. Let's not forget that not all anencephalic children are stillborn. A child with a functioning brainstem is still anencephalic. And just because the prospects for such a child are hopeless, does not mean that therapeutic use is possible. Let's look at the benchmark case: Baby Theresa. She was born alive in 1992--having been diagnosed as anencephalic in utero. Her parents sought to donate her organs, but she survived post-partum for nine days and her organs were no longer viable for transplant. A child born with a functioning brainstem is still anencephalic, but cannot be declared dead so long as brain stem reactions like spontaneous respiration are in place. And if they're not dead, their organs cannot be used for transplant.

And what happens with the rest? Baby A needs a heart. Baby B is conceived, anencephalated and a viable heart is harvested. What do you do with the lungs, the liver and the kidneys? Surely every child awaiting these organs has a mother incubating her own donor fetus. All of which suggests a very wasteful process. But I suppose charitable therapeutic use is always possible. So for Baby A, who is lucky enough to have wealthy parents, a bespoke donor fetus is created, and then, in a fit of noblesse oblige the extras are gifted to the less fortunate.

And remember, most of all, that there are three living, human beings--child, mother and father. In our ambitious zeal to heal the child, we run the risk of running roughshod over the parents. Is mother in a physical or mental state to undergo another preganancy under these circumstances? Can the parents cope with such a therapeutic approach?

Stem cell research is presenting far more prospect of success, with far fewer ethical hurdles to overcome.

i dont think he means that.
He is not talking about you whipping up a new baby to be canibalized for parts for your existing sick baby.

He is talking each person being assigned two or three zombie clones of themselves at birth that would grow up in paralell with you. Then- when the crises arise- you would have them on hand - to be carved up at needed!

Trouble is- well- there are MANY problems. for one- you mom would have to give birth to these clones of you- as well as to you. And further- these brainless beings would consume food, and be subject to diseaases themselves- and would be essentially excess baggage for decades- until they are needed.

So - its not not one kind of outrageous stupidity- its ANOTHER kind of outrageous stupidity!

Lol!

YippySkippy
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05 Feb 2013, 3:58 pm

What about muscle atrophy, bed sores, and the like?
You're going to need an army of nurses to change diapers, turn them, manage their feeding tubes, etc.
If everyone has two or three clones, then almost every person on Earth will be employed in their care!

Dantac
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05 Feb 2013, 6:10 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

Yes, why not.
You want to start an anencephalic bordello?

.

I normally do not give in the Yuccchh factor but this is disgusting.

ruveyn

Why? You can easily find women with less intellectual appeal and those do have brains.

(ooh im gonna catch flak for this one.. :twisted:

)

OP: I think its a good idea. No brain = no one is home.I don't see ethical concerns but plenty of religious ones.

But I don't think it will work out. Its not a case of its if possible, its a case of if its cost effective.

The question would be how to keep the body alive and healthy. Humans in comatose states need extensive care just to prevent damage or sudden death due to being in one position too long. The only alternative would be a sort of cold storage where cell activity is reduced to a minimum... but even that means a lot of costs and resources.

This is why stem research and growing organs to order is a much better solution. Even now they are also developing 3D printing of organs using stem cells and a 'template mesh'. If that succeeds not only can an organ be cloned in a week or so but it would also solve food problems: they can simply factory produce meat.

CyborgUprising
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05 Feb 2013, 8:40 pm

There has been experimental tissue and organ regeneration involving extracellular matrix derived from swine and denatured, then impregnated with human adult stem cells. A soldier wounded in combat was able to regenerate the damaged portion of his leg, a man was able to regrow the tip of his finger and a human heart was created in a laboratory.
There is no guarantee that anencephaly is a hereditary condition: Parents of anencephalic babies tend to give birth to normal children, not solely malformed ones, however, I do find a sort of dark humor in the OP's proposition.

Quantum_Immortal
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05 Feb 2013, 9:13 pm

Inventor wrote:

What you are proposing is the first step to becoming Xians.

Yes
And legalizing abortion is the first step for legalizing infanticide
And lowering the age of consent is the first step for legalizing pedophilia of 4 year old girls
And legalizing euthanasia is the first step for eugenics
And legalizing same sex marriage is the first step for forcing homosexuality to all children
And .....

You get my drift?

visagrunt wrote:

You really are mired in a fantasy world.
[....]

I'm not too detailed in the OP, because it would become too long.

The wild population of anencephalics is very heterogeneous. In general, something wrong happened, and the fetus is messed up. In general anencephaly is one of the problems.

The technical difficulties of keeping them alive are orders of magnitude simpler, then what stem cells are proposing. Try keeping alive a heart by it self, with no body.

The idea is. You make sure that they are genetically in good shape (apart the no brain thing).
You use large numbers of them wired on machines. For example 1000, that would give economies of scale. Human supervision will be very small. They will be floating in sterile liquid.
If some of them die, it's not a big deal.
We'll also use growth hormones, so that they reach adult size as fast as possible.
We can imagine huge factories with 100s of thousands of them. Organ production at an industrial scale. The factory could cost some billions, and probably a heart would cost less then 10.000.

You breed between them, those that survive beater. In effect, you are doing selective breading.
If for example, the first generation bach of 1000, 100 survive long enough, the next generation will come only from those 100. The next generation will probably have a survival rate above 50% instead of 10% . This is only the second generation.
Further selective breading can happen, for faster growth, and what ever is interesting.
This way the machine infrastructure can be less expensive.

I think a whole living cow or horse cost around 10.000-20.000. Taking in to account it must be medical grade stuff, and that they are brainless. I think that a heart could cost less then 10000 to produce, very reasonable price. These are very rough guesses.

The anencephalic population will be genetically diverse and relatively large in size. We consider all the anencephalics that would be needed to supply organ to the whole of the EU of 500 million for example.
We chose donors that are the most compatible to the receiver. Long term, we can have selective breeding and genetic engineering to refine the process.

You can also make other tweeks, but i'm getting too long

YippySkippy wrote:

What do you propose to do with all the "accidental" normal fetuses?

You remove the brain genes. The relevant Homeobox genes?It's easier to remove then add stuff.

So it's Impossible!
Except for anencephalophilia accidents

naturalplastic wrote:

He is talking each person being assigned two or three zombie clones of themselves at birth that would grow up in paralell with you. Then- when the crises arise- you would have them on hand - to be carved up at needed!

No. The anencephalics will be an other human race basically. No cloning, it will be generic organs for transplants. Cloning will be too impractical.

YippySkippy wrote:

No clones. It's an other "race". Generic organs.

They float in liquid and sterile environment. They are wired to machines. Machines perform automated physiotherapy, both ends are tubed, etc. What ever needs to be injected, is injected automatically. If one of them has a problem, we see if its cost effective to try and fix it. Human supervision is extremely small, and mainly not qualified. Qualified personnel is even less numerous.

It's a factory, not a hospital.

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Tensu
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05 Feb 2013, 11:12 pm

So you are proposing hooking them up to machine that will spend electric pulses to them to trigger their lungs to breathe, their hearts to beat, their stomachs to digest, etc. and machine that will give them food and water.

Even if we set aside the ethical issues, there are enough practical concerns to make your idea unfeasible.

Firstly, hooking up electric wires that would replace the central nervous system would require some seriously trained professionals, if it can even be done at all.

Next, you have to power all those machines constantly. Not only does this mean huge electric consumption, it also means one power outage and your whole inventory is kaput. There are back-ups that can kick on fast enough not to break the flow of power, though. But that doesn't address the cost of power.

Next, you have to feed and water all those bodies. We barely have enough land to grow food for our real people, at least not without throwing the terran biosphere into a death-spiral, and water resources are already strained; We and some of the other river basin states are fighting with the western states who want to use all our water to irrigate their crops. We don't need a bunch of organ farms straining our resources further.

You could say it's only for the very rich and that there wouldn't be enough of these factories to significantly increase consumption o resources, but limiting supply will raise costs further, meaning only really, really rich people could afford it and there are not enough of them to create a demand large enough to warrant spending the resources it would take to have such a factory constantly in operation. There is no money to be made.

Quantum_Immortal
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06 Feb 2013, 12:39 am

Tensu wrote:

The degree of mechanization will vary depending on the portion of the brain stem that is allowed. But we can do with out it.(anencephaly can happen with, or without a brain stem)

You can ask mike what he thinks of my theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

You use a respirator, you push air in, pump air out.
You just push the food down it's thought, suck the excrements from the other side.
The heart is semi autonomous, it beats by it self. The central nervous system controls the frequency. I think that the stomach doesn't need the brain at all to do it's work( didn't check), they are things like the instinct of discuss (you see rotten food, you want to through up) that are mediated from the brain, but we don't care about that.
I think the entire digestive system is autonomous. A bit like the heart, it has it's own pacemaker.

A lot of other stuff are autonomous or semi autonomous from the brain. They are other secondary nervous systems that do the grunt work of staying alive. I think that in you're belly you have as much neurones as in you're brain, or something like that (i could be off on this one).

If you really need direct activation of nerves for some things, they will be very few.
They will be preserved in a controlled environment, we'll not need to reactivate everything.
I don't think it's necessary to do any wiring to nerves to keep it alive.
If you do, you don't need a doctor to do it. If it dies, it's not like a normal human dying at a hospital.
At worse, you need some one that is trained to just plug a needle at the right spot.
You don't need a Ph.d for that, a week of training should do.
There isn't a children's experiment with frogs legs that they make them move with electricity?
There are even electric stuff for losing weight, that make muscles contract with electricity.
It's not a hospital, it's a factory.

You don't want to electrocute or fry them. Neural impulses carry a very small amount of energy, a simple computer can control what signals are sent. You don't need a quadcore either. Probably inexpensive microchips should do the trick.

The earth can produce enough food for every one. Hunger exist in the world because of political reasons. I think you are falsly comparing this with biofuels, what a human need to eat is considerably less then what a car "eats".

All this complicated monkey business, is for precisely to bring costs down.
The very rich can simply make real clones of them selves with no brain, and keep them in some organ bank for the rich. The whole process of cloning, blocking the brain manually, and stocking them alive, is too expensive.

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visagrunt
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06 Feb 2013, 4:25 pm

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

I'm not too detailed in the OP, because it would become too long.

The wild population of anencephalics is very heterogeneous. In general, something wrong happened, and the fetus is messed up. In general anencephaly is one of the problems.

The technical difficulties of keeping them alive are orders of magnitude simpler, then what stem cells are proposing. Try keeping alive a heart by it self, with no body.
The idea is. You make sure that they are genetically in good shape (apart the no brain thing).
You use large numbers of them wired on machines. For example 1000, that would give economies of scale. Human supervision will be very small. They will be floating in sterile liquid.
If some of them die, it's not a big deal.
We'll also use growth hormones, so that they reach adult size as fast as possible.
We can imagine huge factories with 100s of thousands of them. Organ production at an industrial scale. The factory could cost some billions, and probably a heart would cost less then 10.000.

You breed between them, those that survive beater. In effect, you are doing selective breading.
If for example, the first generation bach of 1000, 100 survive long enough, the next generation will come only from those 100. The next generation will probably have a survival rate above 50% instead of 10% . This is only the second generation.
Further selective breading can happen, for faster growth, and what ever is interesting.
This way the machine infrastructure can be less expensive.

I think a whole living cow or horse cost around 10.000-20.000. Taking in to account it must be medical grade stuff, and that they are brainless. I think that a heart could cost less then 10000 to produce, very reasonable price. These are very rough guesses.

The anencephalic population will be genetically diverse and relatively large in size. We consider all the anencephalics that would be needed to supply organ to the whole of the EU of 500 million for example.
We chose donors that are the most compatible to the receiver. Long term, we can have selective breeding and genetic engineering to refine the process.

You can also make other tweeks, but i'm getting too long.

I notice that you have conveniently failed to respond to the legal and ethical challenges. And nowhere have you addressed the issue that your donors need brainstems.

And therein lies the root of your stupidity. You are so focussed on your fantasy that you are simply unprepared to cope with the realities of your nonsense.

The trick is not to keep a heart alive. The trick is keeping a heart alive and viable for transplantation; that is your business model, after all. It is not enough that the muscle tissue is kept alive--it must be kept healthy enough that it can be transplanted into another human being. What you are proposing does not create healthy organs. It creates factories for degenerative organ disease. It creates living tissue that is useless for any therapeutic purpose.

Simply your proposal of using growth hormones will very likely result in widespread diabetes. So, no useful pancreas for transplant. Next on the hit parade is lymphoma. That will, in turn, render their kidneys useless for transplantation. Loss of kidney function can, of course, be replaced by dialysis. But suddenly your $10,000 heart costs $500,000 per year to grow and maintain. Your economic model just broke. The liver is going to be none-too-healthy at this point, so there goes another viable transplant. You're rapidly running out of things to harvest.

And, of course, all these feeding tubes, catheters, ostomies, intravenous lines and dialysis lines are each a prime site for infection. So you're going to have to start pumping antibiotics pretty aggressively (that's okay, the feedlot industry can tell you how that's done). But now you've got a recipe for creating anti-biotic resistent pathogens. And the very transplants that lie at the centre of your model are the vector that would introduced these into the human population. A human population that must, necessarily be artificially immune suppressed in order to avoid transplant rejection.

Congratulations. Your transplant just killed the patient through XDR infectious disease.

Your factory is useless, your billions are wasted.

Quote:

You remove the brain genes. The relevant Homeobox genes?It's easier to remove then add stuff.

There are no "brain genes." Genes that are active in neurons in the brain are also active in neurons in the other parts of the nervous system, and in other cells throughout the body. But we can't just put together a recombinant DNA sequence to "switch off" the development of a brain. The genome doesn't work that way.

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06 Feb 2013, 11:21 pm

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

The earth can produce enough food for every one. Hunger exist in the world because of political reasons.

While it's true that if Africa were to stop shooting itself up a lot more farms could exist there and if rainforest countries used those unique ecosystem to grow multiple crops in small portion of land instead of burning it down and raising cattle and if we would let our livestock graze instead of feeding them corn and if developed countries would quit throwing half their food away for stupid reasons like sell-by dates and damaged packaging there would be a lot less hunger, but all those problems exist in the real world and in order for your idea to work in the real world you need to address those problems.

I suppose you could feed them all the "expired" food that gets thrown away but is still edible, but that is still taking away the food supply of the freegans and it still doesn't address the earth's limited fresh water resources.

Quote:

All this complicated monkey business, is for precisely to bring costs down.
The very rich can simply make real clones of them selves with no brain, and keep them in some organ bank for the rich. The whole process of cloning, blocking the brain manually, and stocking them alive, is too expensive.

Nobody is doing that. Introducing a cheaper alternative to something that nobody is doing will not save money.

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07 Feb 2013, 5:48 am

@visagrunt

You simply change the law.
It's not a scientific poll, and the sample is a bit small and biased. But 2/3 of the pollers approved it. I extrapolate that at least 50% of the general population would approve it also.
They are 200 countries on the planet, not counting federal jurisdictions. There should be plenty of countries that you get over 50% .

You can do with out brain stems. Hint the anencephalic somehow made it to birth day.
The problems aren't fundamental. It's not like trying to go faster then the speed of light.
The problems can be worked out.
It's not like trying to make a heart ready for transplant in the lab, you seam to assume that that's a given. It's easier to find how to grow them right, then somehow make a liver or a kidney with just stem cells in a lab. Organs aren't petunias.
You overstate the problems.

What do they need? Food, air, exercise, hormonal balance, clean/sterile environment ect...
You can make injections of certain hormones, certain drugs, use electrostimulation for exercizing the muscles. Maybe a bit of adrenaline from time to time to stimulate stuff. They will be submerged in an artificial controlled environment. Probably sterile, or very clean. If it's sterile the immune system could go berserk, so a balance is needed in the cleanliness. We don't want them to be meaty like in the meat industry, we just want them at adult size the fastest possible (have you seen a cow's ass how big it is?). We will not be giving them that for 30 years either as with humans consuming meat. They are many growth hormones, pick what is needed. Even make new artificial drugs. Baby elephants are over 100 kilos for what? less then 3 years of gestation? It's not a fundamental physiological problem. It's matter of dosage and timing.

by brain genes i was general. They are genes that control how the brain is folded and cell migration and stuff. I think that's the homeobox genes (don't take my word for it). They have responsibility in the development of fetuses. Very conservative piece of genome, you can make experiments on animals and they are transferable to humans. They are practical, because they are lined up, from head to tail i think (the legs are "fish fins").
It's not like trying to make a worm hole. More complicated genetic manipulations have been done. The easiest of all, is to remove stuff.

Tensu wrote:

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

The earth can produce enough food for every one. Hunger exist in the world because of political reasons.

We are not going to double the population. It's going to be a certain relatively small fraction of the population, at all time. Almost all people bellow 30 will not need any of these kind of services. As they age, the need start to rise gradually, but even then, it's not 1 to 1. A single anencephalic can disperse it's organs to a lot of patients, in the end it's completely "cannibalized".

Also, the human brain consumes 20% of the energy at rest. Making them 20% less voracious. And they will not be obese, not eat candy, eat there salad, always finish there meals, have a sedentary life, all will be scrony, etc..... Probably vital organs will be in higher need then limbs, so we can have a fraction of the anencephalics with no limbs. They will weight what? 35 kilos? No need for bodybuilders. The ones with no limbs will weight even less. If a bodybuilder gets an arm transplant, he can just work out. The length of the bone is more important, it will not change onse it's set, muscular mass is just the cells swelling. You can have some that are particularly big, for big people (organs size matters).

It's very far from 1 to 1 with humans, probably closer to 50%.
It's really a non issue.

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Quantum_Immortal
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07 Feb 2013, 6:21 am

:idea: Kool idea
I just thought of this one. I just modified my idea a bit. (need to research it though)
Why i didn't thought of that one earlier?
We could just have small organs, and simply put several of them in one adult patient.

You'll be getting 2 small baby kidneys, instead of one big one. They will not grow with out growth hormones(true? Not sure). We could remove one afterworlds if they do eventually.. Need to look in to it, it's a viable solution any way, in both cases, it's an other cost saver. And about bones, not sure what happens if you attach a baby arm on an adult. There is the cartilage pieces that should make it grow. I think that they will not grow, because of lack of growth hormones (not sure). I don't think that this kind of transplants were ever tested.

If we need to remove one of them. We prepare for that during the first surgery. Blood vessels would be easily clampable, then we suck the unwanted organ from a small hole, so that the patient goes home the same day. Or we put just under the skin. Or in a box, with only vessels connected to the body. We can retransplant it to some one else.....
It's not that big of a deal.

All that will be trickier to do with two small hearts. That's actually a good idea, if one stops, you'll feel like s**t, but you will not die. Deaths from heart attacks will fall to practically zero. What a terrible idea, to have only one heart anyway. Natural selection is really an uncaring mother. Isn't that cooooollll or what? Two hearts. An upgrade to dual core. Quad core is next..... Allons-y Alonso!! !!
Heeeeeyyyy. We can test that on animals asap. It's not that hard.
Lets make some abominations, where's my lab coat?

Some one wants to fill me in about growth?
Home work, my dear readers. I'll let you do the search you're selves.
Come back so that we discuss it here.

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b9
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07 Feb 2013, 7:29 am

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

@visagrunt

You simply change the law.

without the approval of a sensible legislative assembly?

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

I extrapolate that at least 50% of the general population would approve it also.

approval of a fantastic (literally so) idea does not make it viable.

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

You can do with out brain stems. Hint the anencephalic somehow made it to birth day.

that is because they are connected to the placenta of their mothers via the umbilical cord. all the hormones needed for physical development are derived from the mothers blood stream, but once the umbilicus is severed, the child will die.

apart from the points raised by visa grunt, you fail to acknowledge that the hormones necessary for all the processes of physical survival (enabled by the hypothalamus and the pineal glands (among may other systems)) will result in death if they are not present.

ignoring that absolute barrier to survival, one could consider the inactivity of the immobile anencephalics to be another insurmountable barrier. if a human body lies in a bed for many years without any movement, the skeleton will disintegrate and the organs will will be crushed. there is no inuring of the organic system to the wiles of life with no exercise whatsoever.

you may try to counter that argument with the idea that you could electrically stimulate the brain dead persons muscles to approximate exercise, but you would then be failing to take into account that the heart rate would not increase due to the exercise unless yet another artificially calibrated pace making input was applied.

no gonadotrophs therefore no spermatogenesis is possible without an anterior pituitary lobe and the story is the same with females... actually i could go on for many pages but there are more interesting posts to look for i am sure.
the amount of work required to make a brain dead person's physiology viable is far greater than money can buy.

put the paddles back into their holsters. the idea is dead.

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07 Feb 2013, 9:50 am

Legal, religious, and ethical concerns aside, this idea still seems unworkable. It would be extremely expensive not only in terms of $$ needed, but also in terms of energy consumption, manpower, and food consumption.
They may not have brains, but they still require nutrition. I don't think tripling current world food production is even possible, and that's only one small part of what would be required.
Sorry, it's a lovely idea for a sci-fi novel, but it's just not feasible now or in the foreseeable future.

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07 Feb 2013, 10:55 am

@b9

If you need to inject something, you just inject it. An endrocrinologist will know what to do. You put that in software. The quantity of hormones necessary is extremely small, you can just inject some standard cocktail in them.
If it needs exercise, you just stimulate it and/or move it with machines.
If it needs a pacemaker, you do that......

You have a standard package. A standard software. A standard fluid tank. A standard hormonal cocktail injection. Standard exercises schemes. For a place like the EU of 500 million. If you assume that you'll have at all time 1 million of anencephalics(0,2% of population). Industry will make 1 million standard life support systems as cheaply as possible (economies of scales). They will be 1 million, exactly the same, pieces of equipment. They will not be human graded, a relatively high failure rate will be tolerated. They will try to optimize cost, not anencephalic survival. On top of that you add the possibilities for genetic engineering and selective breading that will smooth things out. With these kind of things, you get over 50% of the juice easily, the rest will take a lot of effort.

YippySkippy wrote:

You are considerably off mark.

tripling food consumption implies that over 2/3 of the world population is anencephalic.
2/3 assuming it will be 1 to 1 with humans about food consumption. The brain consumes 20% of resources, on top of that they will not be very active, so there consumption will be well bellow average.
No obesity, no food wasted, no candies, no bodybuilders etc....
You don't even need a 1 to 1 ratio with the population. Probably .... less then 10% at any given time will be enough.
A guess, a bit less sloppy. If we assume, that for every citizen, we'll need in his lifetime an average anencephalic alive for 5 years. And that life expectancy is of 100 (70+30). That's 5% of the population being anencephalic. Consuming food, at a rate closer to 50%, then 80%.
You are considerably off mark. At least 20 times.

You will not put them in hospitals with nurses, you'll put them in factories. You apply economies of scales, a lot of automation, etc.....

The biggest energy consumption, will be probably construction.

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07 Feb 2013, 11:24 pm

Quantum_Immortal wrote:

It is by no means a non issue!

Veggies may be high in nutrition but they're also low in energy and/or tough to digest. While being inactive will reduce their energy requirements pumping growth hormones into them will increase those requirements. Cramming fourth months worth of growth into one month means requiring 4x as much food. Even with growth hormones it will take years for them to reach adult size. You'll need to feed them up until then.

And they will still need a lot of water. Quit ignoring the water.

The entire person won't be cannibalized because once a vital organ is removed for transplant the body will die. You could put the other organs on the donor list for transplant, but you can't sell them. Your profit margin is going to be very small if it even exists at all.

No arms and no legs? The technology to genetically engineer that is beyond our grasp and don't suggest artificial selection because that means wait for a no arms+no legs gene to show up in the anecepheletic gene pool and then spending many, many, many years breeding. Are you just going to cut them off? I'm not sure how well they would heal with no brain...

And consider this: The organs from the stock, being inbred and grown in sterile conditions, will have no resistance to disease. As soon as old rich guy gets he's heart transplant he's going to get sick again. And I can't imagine an organ that has been pumped full of growth hormones for years being transplanted into another body not having complications.

Furthermore, even if the food and water required will be small, it is still food that could be sold in starving nations. You are taking perfectly good food and feeding it to an organ farm for something only the obscenely rich can afford while people in developing countries starve to death. Still think your idea is ethical?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but your idea is bad. It is bad on every conceivable level.

Economically, there is no money to be made.
Environmentally, it is a fairly pointless strain, however great or small, on the earth's resources.
Legally, it's probably undoable
Technologically, we don't have the equipment
Morally, it is just plain messed-up on more levels than we could ever describe.

It may very well be the worst idea I've ever heard in my entire life, and I have heard some really, REALLY bad ideas.

My intention is not to call you stupid, and I do not believe you are. Smart people can have really bad ideas.

I just want you to know, that what you are proposing is a really bad idea.

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