CA startup, R3 BIO working to grow "headless" human clones for organ harvesting

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That’s crazy! Can they procreate? If so what will happen when one sicko impregnates a headless thing will the offspring have a head?? Imagine the can of worms that are about to be opened.

Straight from a syfy horror film

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In an interview with Wired, R3 listed three investors: billionaire Tim Draper, the Singapore-based fund Immortal Dragons, and life-extension investors LongGame Ventures.

But there is more to the story. And R3 doesn’t want that story told.

MIT Technology Review discovered that the stealth startup’s founder John Schloendorn also pitched a startling, medically graphic, and ethically charged vision for what he's called “brainless clones” to serve the role of backup human bodies.

Imagine it like this: a baby version of yourself with only enough of a brain structure to be alive in case you ever need a new kidney or liver.

Or, alternatively, he has speculated, you might one day get your brain placed into a younger clone. That could be a way to gain a second lifespan through a still hypothetical procedure known as a body transplant.

The fuller context of R3’s proposals, as well as activities of another stealth startup with related goals, have not previously been reported. They’ve been kept secret by a circle of extreme life-extension proponents who fear that their plans for immortality could be derailed by clickbait headlines and public backlash.

And that’s because the idea can sound like something straight from a creepy science fiction film. One person who heard R3’s clone presentation, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, was left reeling by its implications and shaken by Schloendorn’s enthusiastic delivery. The briefing, this person said, was like a “close encounter of the third kind” with “Dr. Strangelove.”

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.

And he’s talked about how to grow a clone. Since artificial wombs don’t exist yet, brainless bodies can’t be grown in a lab. So he’s said the first batch of brainless clones would have to be carried by women paid to do the job. In the future, though, one brainless clone could give birth to another.

Last Monday, the same day it announced itself to the world in Wired, R3 sent us a sweeping disavowal of our findings. It said Schloendorn “never made any statement regarding hypothetical ‘non-sentient human clones’ [that] would be carried by surrogates.” The most overarching of these challenges was its insistence that “any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or humans with brain damage are categorically false.”

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Why not just grow "parts"? Haven't they grown like human ears on mice already? You'd think if you can do headless, you could do "parts".

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