A startup is secretly cloning bodies without brains — to welcome the future

The North American startup R3 Bio is quietly selling the idea of ​​cloned human bodies to receive transplanted brains. The proposal is as absurd as it sounds.

Since the mid-1990s, animal cloning has fueled the fascination of science. The most emblematic case remains that of , which in 1996 became the first mammal cloned from a cell taken from the mammary gland of an adult animal.

The passage of cloning animal embryos to human embryos It turned out, however, much more controversial — and not just because of the extensive list of risks involved.

Until now, scientists have limited themselves to creating models of human embryos from stem cells and cloning primates with fetal cellsand not with adult cells, as happened with Dolly.

This did not prevent, however, that some continued to explore the ideaas part of a discreet initiative that seeks an alternative to anti-aging technologies and that seems straight out of a dystopian novel science fiction.

a startup funded by a multimillionaire and until now kept in low profile, recently announced that it was trying to raise funds to develop “organ reservoirs” of non-sentient monkeys, said last week.

The North American startup’s proposal, unusual to say the least, is presented as an alternative to animal testing. These structures would contain all usual organs, with the exception of the brainand could serve as a source of organs and tissues for transplantation.

But according to further investigation by , R3 Bio’s founders will have a much more ambitious goal: to create “brainless clones” of human bodiesso that elderly or sick people can, one day, transfer your own brain to these bodies.

There’s even a “advantage”, albeit macabrein not developing the brain in these donor bodies: a brainless clone would bypassconveniently, some of the most obvious moral dilemmas that this idea raises.

In a statement sent to Tech Review, R3 Bio assured that its founder, John Schloendorn“never made any statements about hypothetical ‘nonsentient human clones’ that would be gestated by surrogates” and insisted that “any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or brain-damaged humans are categorically false”.

Still, there is a revealing detail: the co-founder Alice Gilman told the publication that the team “reserves the right to hold hypothetical discussions and futuristic” about brainless clones involving human beings.

But beyond ethical issues, experts also have serious doubts about the biological feasibility of a full replacement of the body.

“There are too many barriers,” he told Tech Review Jose Cibellia researcher at Michigan State University, who was among the first scientists to attempt to clone human embryos by obtaining compatible stem cells in the early 2000s.

Among the main obstacles are illegality, security risks and the fact that an artificial womb continues to be in the domain of Science fiction. For now, “it would be necessary to convince a woman to carry a fetus in her belly that will be abnormal”, he stated.

However, not even the obvious repulsion factor seems to deter the founders of R3. According to Tech Review, Schloendorn has been studying the possibility of create human substitutespromoting closed-door seminars on the topic and presenting the idea to investors.

However, the founder of R3 refuses to give public interviews, arguing that he first wanted to demonstrate that the benefits of the project are “reasonably anchored in reality” before taking the startup out of anonymity.

For now… we are in the domain of .