Mail-Order Mini-Brains

One of the most unforgettable books I read in grammar school–maybe the sixth grade–told the story of two people who “died” in a car wreck intentionally made to happen by “the bad guys.” The villains were evil scientists and the victims a good-science man and wife.

I forget the details but somehow their brains were harvested soon after the wreck, suspended in glass jars and connected to what we would now call a computer. By means of this connection, they could communicate and could exert some physical control over materials in their lab.

What they crafted, as memory serves, were eyeballs on a piece of muscle that allowed them to jump from place to place and spy on their enemies.

I think in the end they defeated the bad guys, reconstituted their bodies and reunited their brains with the appropriate skull and lived happily ever after.

I tell this longwinded tale because I only recently revisited it after reading that…

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have created “mini brains that have been generated from skin cells, which following collection from several healthy adults, were reprogrammed to embryonic stem cells and then induced to differentiate into brain cells. Each embryonic stem cell develops into a separate mini brain.”

These clumps of neurons are not brains at all, but it makes for good press .They are standardized clumps of brain tissue created artificially for the purpose of testing the effects of toxics and treatments on a large number of “subjects” who are not rhesus monkeys or lab rats.

Mini-brains will be available by mail order later this year. Shudder. If you see them with tennis shoes, that can’t be good.