The stealthy startup that pitched brainless human clones
by joozio on 3/30/2026, 11:02:14 AM
Comments
by: babblingfish
I don't think this idea could work. There's this common misconception that our brains control our bodies, like how software can control hardware. The fact is that our brains are intrinsically connected to the rest of our body: via the central nervous system, sensory, and motor neurons. You can't just swap out our brains. It's integrated with the rest of our body in a fundamental way. If you cloned someone, the neuronal connections between the CNS and organs would not be the same, because these interconnections develop over a lifetime and are not predetermined at birth.<p>It also feels super unethical to me. Reminds me of "Never let me go" by Kazuo Ishiguro.
3/30/2026, 10:31:22 PM
by: nathanh4903
These type of research seems to always assume that we are a ghost in a machine: the brain is what really matters, and the body is nothing more than a suit. The mind-body problem fascinates me, and I'm skeptical of anyone who held any position with certainty.<p>The only thing thats certain is that the debate on the mind-body problem is going to be no longer just philosophical/theological, but a practical problem with real world implication. Its exciting and terrifying that we may soon have empirical data refuting or supporting dualism.
3/30/2026, 10:31:26 PM
by: Animats
Cloning works rather well now. Here are six polo ponies, Cuartetera 01 through 06, all clones of a famous polo pony.[1] Their owner has been winning world class polo matches on these mares. They're strong and healthy and very real.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/six-cloned-horses-help-rider-win-prestigious-polo-match" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/six-cloned-horses-he...</a>
3/30/2026, 10:07:33 PM
by: nwah1
Is there any danger of transplanting organs into you that have genes which signal not to develop a brain? Would those genes potentially affect your actual brain?
3/30/2026, 10:09:49 PM
by: moffers
It’s good to know that the ethical line is some amount of human brain cells. Not too much, not too little. The perfect, ethical amount.
3/30/2026, 10:27:58 PM
by: johnpdoe1234
Spares (1996, HarperCollins) – ISBN 978-0002246569 Michael Marshall Smith
3/30/2026, 10:10:24 PM
by: goda90
I enjoyed reading a Young Adult Sci-Fi novel with this premise called The House of the Scorpion[0]. The main character is a clone who's owner is a powerful enough drug lord to get away with not having his organ clones' brains crippled at birth like all the others are.<p>[0]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Scorpion" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Scorpion</a>
3/30/2026, 10:15:24 PM
by: btwotch
Sounds a bit like "The Island" movie from 2005.
3/30/2026, 10:03:33 PM
by: caycep
There is some shared juju these people and the wellness influencer crowd in Brentwood are smoking
3/30/2026, 10:33:47 PM
by: XorNot
The problem here isn't the idea, it's that absolutely no one has done any useful precursor research.<p>Discussing replacement bodies is pretty rich when spinal cord injuries prognosis is still lifelong paralysis.<p>And if I were to extend that thought a little further: we're more likely to develop useful and less invasive rejuvenation technology then to try and do surgical body transplants because the technology you'd need to fix spinal cord injury - which is mandatory - would have a lot more overlap and applicability to in situ tissue repair anyway.
3/30/2026, 10:04:36 PM
by: rolandog
This is all giving me Altered Carbon vibes.
3/30/2026, 10:25:35 PM
by: throwway120385
I'm mentally reading all of the quotes from this guy in the voice of Walter from Fringe.<p>The thing about this research is that it's A) completely unhinged, and B) if it pans out it's going to be yet another path for people to accumulate wealth for the rest of their lives. Also if it works eventually the world will come to be ruled by the severely brain-damaged clones of whichever billionaires survived this process, or their children.<p>Behold the future of meat.
3/30/2026, 10:55:58 PM
by: jostmey
I am assuming the proposal is to knockout the gene Lim1, which in other animals, creates a brainless phenotype. You won't be able to swap a brain into this headless body (assuming it can fully develop), but this approach could be used for medical research and potentially solve the problem of organ donors, assuming it is ethical<p>Also, just because Lem1 creates a headless mouse doesn't mean it will do the same in Humans. But I suppose that's what the primate testing will reveal
3/30/2026, 11:03:48 PM
by: anigbrowl
Every time I hear about a tech firm trying to implement some dystopian/nightmarish sci-vision, I think of Tobias from <i>Arrested Development</i> saing '...but it might work for <i>us</i>.'
3/30/2026, 10:44:22 PM
by: wiradikusuma
Sounds like Altered Carbon (tv series).
3/30/2026, 10:16:54 PM
by: metalman
as usual the big lies are right in the header, "stealthy", ooooo! la la and then the bizare notion that a full sized human chasis will just, appear all buff and ready for harvesting, no the only ones who are mindless are the few rich and desperate enough throw a couple hundred million at something that will almost certainly get shut down if for nothing else, the ethics of gestating brainldead (there will most definitly be a brain) clones.
3/30/2026, 11:55:31 PM
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3/30/2026, 10:17:15 PM
by: throwaway85825
Better biomimicry is a growth area in robotics but a brainless human just isn't possible.
3/30/2026, 10:52:01 PM
by: andrewshadura
This website is almost impossible to read. Pop-ups, "see also" blocks, lots of distractions. I wonder if the creators ever tried actually using it.
3/30/2026, 10:04:41 PM
by: api
If it’s truly brainless then I don’t see a major ethical problem. But I also don’t see people being allowed to do this because it’s much too far past the “yuck” threshold. It’s gross and disturbing even if technically it is ethical.<p>I also think it would be way harder to do this than it sounds. The body would not develop properly past the fetal stage without some kind of artificial stimulation.<p>Printing organs is probably both more likely to work and more likely to be accepted.
3/30/2026, 10:43:38 PM
by: trhway
it isn't brainless :<p>"a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive"<p>"A key inspiration for Schloendorn is a birth defect in which children are born missing most of their cortical hemispheres; he’s shown people medical scans of these kids’ nearly empty skulls as evidence that a body can live without much of a brain. "<p>That looks like hardware firmware vs. software. The clone would come with the firmware. Giving that the brain ages too, one can later want for the lower level brain parts to be refreshed too - i.e. amigdala, lower level visual cortex, etc - to come with the clone on top of the firmware.<p>For getting spare parts one would have expected that growing individual organs would come first, yet it may happen that growing them all together as such "brainless" body may be simpler.<p>Ethics-wise i think we're going into pretty nightmarish scenarios - as mentioned in the article women will be used as surrogates, and thus a multi-billionaire today can already clone himself, CRISP-in brain suppression (we'd like to hope that they would do it), and get such a body-clone as a source of parts.
3/30/2026, 10:37:59 PM