Ressurection

[Gwazi Magnum]

This isn't a spiritual resurrection or ascend sort of deal like the other thread.
In this case I'm talking about biologically taking a dead body and bringing it back to life.
Same person, same body, same individual.

Inspired by the video in the spoiler.

(It's in a spoiler because it's rather graphic. Including reanimating a dog's severed head. Not to the point it's concious, but nerves and the such all become active again).

The video

So basically what are your thoughts on such a thing?
Would you be willing to be resurrected by such a thing once such technology is perfected?
Do you have any personal concerns and/or fascinations for or against it?
How humane do you find such experiments to be?

Edit: I should clarify since confusion happened below, the questions about stuff like "would you want to be resurrected" is when the technology is improved, in a better state etc. I'm not asking if you would support it if it's quality level was still at that shown in the video.

 

[Hatsune Candy]

My biggest concern with ressurecting a living being, especially a human one, is could it even work? And that begs the whole question of how consciousness works, and whether it exists via the brain or some other unknown means? We don't really know and that's kind of an important question that we would need to answer first. That said I'm rather interested in the idea and I would like to see if it's possible one day.

But... Then again, now that I think about it, there have been cases where people were technically ressurected (even if they were only dead for no more than a few minutes) and they still had a consciousness as far anyone is aware, soo I dunno. Of course, that was only for a few minutes, result might vary after say... a couple of days.

 

[C92cool]

Well here's the issue, we're always dying to some extent. Every day we lose brain cells and our body slowly stops working. Now we take this situation where everything shuts off completely and is essentially done a hard reset for the entire body. The being that is resurrected won't be the same person who died due to everything that died off when they were dead. The other issue is that they cross over to some extent once dead, or remain trap here. Putting religion based arguments aside, you're putting the entity of a dead person, soul as we will call it, back into the body and telling it to jump start and take control of the body once more. The issue is what has the entity, the soul, been through in the time spam of the death of the physical form. Going through what it's been through and then being place back into the body will cause damage, mentally and emotionally at least but possible physical damage as well. In the end it won't be the same as the person who was once alive, but I've seen this vid before and all of this is merely my opinion.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

By that sense though haven't we all already died then?
Your personality is constantly changing, and every 7 years or so every piece that makes up who we are has essentially been replaced/regrown.

As for what they've been through while dead?
Being atheist myself I don't believe in souls, so I'm not going to be touching the soul aspect.
Though physically the video did show to have effects, the fully resurrected dog (not the head) took almost 2 weeks to get back to physical capacity.
Mental and Emotionally? That if we're going by the video I'll admit we lack much understanding on, it was on a dog and there seemed to be a lack of brain scans.
We couldn't exactly go "Hey C92, you still like roleplaying?" or anything with them.

 

[C92cool]

You make a good point, but a dog is a bad example for the research to be done upon. We could never ask it things that would compel us to know if mentally or emotionally it has changed, but I would assume so since we change over time. Yes that would mean we have died already, but that's a sense of dying in the form of your personality and aspects. Everything causes us to die in some way, just some things take us through bigger changes then others. The only real way to know about this is to perform it on a person, but of course that would be some Mary Shelly Frankenstein antics and clearly that went wrong, though the story did involve several bodies and not one which lead to some issues. Stuffing multiple people into one body would never be a good idea.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

That's my point with the dog, we can't ask it and test it on personality and mental changes the same way we can a person.

Which as you said leaves us with human testing, which if we ever plan to use this on humans we need to test it on a human at some point.
The question then becomes 'when is it safe enough to do so?'. Plus let's remember Frakenstein was a movie, and also liked you said a mish-mash of multiple people. Not one individual being resurrected in their original body.

Side Note: The fact this is resurrection via machines also helps nudge is in the direction of life that is both biological and mechanical. Essentially in the direction of cyborgs, which I am super excited for.
I want to be able to get some kind of practical cybernetic augmentation before I die.

 

[Dervish]

By that sense though haven't we all already died then?
Your personality is constantly changing, and every 7 years or so every piece that makes up who we are has essentially been replaced/regrown.

As for what they've been through while dead?
Being atheist myself I don't believe in souls, so I'm not going to be touching the soul aspect.
Though physically the video did show to have effects, the fully resurrected dog (not the head) took almost 2 weeks to get back to physical capacity.
Mental and Emotionally? That if we're going by the video I'll admit we lack much understanding on, it was on a dog and there seemed to be a lack of brain scans.
We couldn't exactly go "Hey C92, you still like roleplaying?" or anything with them.

The human body isn't really a good substitute for the Ship of Thesus philosophy (If Thesus replaces every piece of wood on his ship over its service life, is it still his ship or a completely new one?) because our body is a living organism. Hell, it takes less than a week for us to grow an entirely new stomach because of the acids in our stomach constantly destroy the tissues it gets in contact with. Regenerating damaged tissue really isn't any different than testicles or ovaries replacing sperm or eggs in the grand scheme of things. It's just tissue regeneration. Every living thing does it.

As for the topic at hand, even assuming you could revive a dead body, it wouldn't be that person anymore, let alone anything other than a barely functioning vegetable. Decay happens immediately upon death, and since tissues don't regenerate without the body functioning, and permanent brain damage occurs 4-6 minutes without oxygen, taking a corpse that's even half an hour old and trying to revive it is just asking to partially start a body that's immediately going to suffer for it. It's kind of a dick move. It won't survive, and even if you could keep it alive on life support, what the hell's the point?

 

[C92cool]

But that's the issue, mechanical is being used. You would have to find a more "natural" way to resurrect the dead in order to get a "proper" test result. The bottom line I'm feeling from it is that we could do the testing at any time, but I feel like the outcome will always be obscure unless we see some kind of full blown miracle of a dead person just coming back to life and seeing how they are doing. If we interfere in anyway other than simply finding a "natural" way of relighting the brain and heart then we would be contaminating the results which is something that we don't want. Sometimes the dead should just stay dead for though movies, books, and TV shows are simply fiction, they all have never ended good with reanimated people.

 

[Dervish]

Side Note: The fact this is resurrection via machines also helps nudge is in the direction of life that is both biological and mechanical. Essentially in the direction of cyborgs, which I am super excited for.
I want to be able to get some kind of practical cybernetic augmentation before I die.

I'd argue that replacing perfectly functional human organs with cybernetic replacements is kind of foolhardy and not really well thought out. Machines get damaged and need maintenance and are incapable of self-healing. There's also a chance your body will reject the implants or your nervous system won't respond with whatever enhancement you thought to install. Given that most machines in constant use don't have a long life, it would become costly and require surgery any time you needed to replace or repair something. Also, if it gives off any kind of wireless signal, you literally just opened your body up to hackers.

Really, it's a terrible idea. The only time I'd consider a cybernetic implant is if I had parts of my body amputated because of injury and I needed a replacement.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

The human body isn't really a good substitute for the Ship of Thesus philosophy (If Thesus replaces every piece of wood on his ship over its service life, is it still his ship or a completely new one?) because our body is a living organism. Hell, it takes less than a week for us to grow an entirely new stomach because of the acids in our stomach constantly destroy the tissues it gets in contact with. Regenerating damaged tissue really isn't any different than testicles or ovaries replacing sperm or eggs in the grand scheme of things. It's just tissue regeneration. Every living thing does it.

I know. I was asking that more for the philosophical question than anything.
Scientifically I don't let stuff like "Is it newer or older tissue?" concern me.

As for the topic at hand, even assuming you could revive a dead body, it wouldn't be that person anymore, let alone anything other than a barely functioning vegetable. Decay happens immediately upon death, and since tissues don't regenerate without the body functioning, and permanent brain damage occurs 4-6 minutes without oxygen, taking a corpse that's even half an hour old and trying to revive it is just asking to partially start a body that's immediately going to suffer for it. It's kind of a dick move. It won't survive, and even if you could keep it alive on life support, what the hell's the point?

With our current technology for sure.

I probably should have clarified with the questions above.
When I asked about thoughts on resurrection I meant when we have it more perfected, not if we used it on humans in it's current state.
I'll edit the OP to clarify that.

But that's the issue, mechanical is being used. You would have to find a more "natural" way to resurrect the dead in order to get a "proper" test result. The bottom line I'm feeling from it is that we could do the testing at any time, but I feel like the outcome will always be obscure unless we see some kind of full blown miracle of a dead person just coming back to life and seeing how they are doing. If we interfere in anyway other than simply finding a "natural" way of relighting the brain and heart then we would be contaminating the results which is something that we don't want. Sometimes the dead should just stay dead for though movies, books, and TV shows are simply fiction, they all have never ended good with reanimated people.

I doubt resurrection would ever happen then in those circumstances.

If we're looking for organic methods it's either something nature already provides or we need to learn to make organic machines.
The way I personally see it metal, machine, organic, tissue, there all materials in a creation or design. What materials are involved shouldn't matter if the end result is the same.

I'd argue that replacing perfectly functional human organs with cybernetic replacements is kind of foolhardy and not really well thought out. Machines get damaged and need maintenance and are incapable of self-healing. There's also a chance your body will reject the implants or your nervous system won't respond with whatever enhancement you thought to install. Given that most machines in constant use don't have a long life, it would become costly and require surgery any time you needed to replace or repair something. Also, if it gives off any kind of wireless signal, you literally just opened your body up to hackers.

Really, it's a terrible idea. The only time I'd consider a cybernetic implant is if I had parts of my body amputated because of injury and I needed a replacement.

I'm not talking hacking off an arm and getting a machine one for the sake of it.

I mean something that would substantially improve my life.
And although it's a dream of mine, I'm smart enough to know how silly it is to just run in for any more augmentation.
If it were ever an option, I'd be damn sure to do my research first and account for stuff like the factors you've listed.

 

[SlamifiedBuddafied]

For the love of God, the following is subjective.

An amazing and fascinating bit of history foolishly ignored by too many due to the international history of Russia and affiliates, specifically the Nazi scientists who first did the aforementioned experiments. That and those who go on and on about what is and isn't humane which brings up the idea of morality, which is nothing but a human construct, not a law of life.

Though the soul is a difficult thing to discuss, simply because of the enormous amount of beliefs humanity has created over our existence since the dawn of civilization. However we have failed in the aspect of death entirely, at least until the twentieth century when our technology was sufficient enough to carry out the sensitive task of restoring function to organs or even a dead body. These days I'm sure we have the ability to do so to a human body, much less any other large enough organism. Though I'm not physiologist, so my knowledge is limited (sadly) to a high school education and some of what I've picked up over the years.

Far as I can see, this is the kind of thing which should shine bright among the scientific community if it were practiced without constant scrutiny from protest groups who preach blind ideals about what is and isn't humane and progress has suffered by decades due to petty desires to not see life injured, when inevitably it will cease. But of course when it comes to matters of the soul or consciousness, I'm not so much on the fence about it, I simply don't have much knowledge at all when it comes to the complexities of the nervous system, pulmonary functions, circulatory system and all the shit meshed in between.

But what I do know in the end is that this is amazing and it is sad that animal rights have taken priority over progress.

 

[Windsong]

Don't hospitals ressurect patients all the time after heart failure and stuff? Same issue?

Some people want to stay dead after they've died. Others don't want to cease existing because for all we know, we are a purely finite being that only lasts for a set time before we cease to exist.

Is it morally right or wrong? Get the persons consent before trying it. Surely there are people who'd be willing to try it for the better of mankind.

Religiously? Well you're a heretic and should be killed according to most. Gods will blah blah. Though some may see it as your particular deity allowing it if it does work.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Don't hospitals ressurect patients all the time after heart failure and stuff? Same issue?

In a sense.
One thing the video specifically did though that was different than most resurrect cases was that the dog was completely drained of his blood first.

I'm not an expert though, I don't really exactly what the differences between the two are.
Though I do find it fascinating we were learning about this stuff so long ago even.

Is it morally right or wrong? Get the persons consent before trying it. Surely there are people who'd be willing to try it for the better of mankind.

Oh yea for sure.
If we were to start human testing consent would have to be a thing.