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Universal Brain Reminding: In the present city, three sights stand out from others, the hilltop Castle, scene of many historic happenings, the venerable University, with its rich library (called Carolina Rediviva) and the 15th-century brick Cathedral, which is the seat of the primate of the Swedish Lutheran State Church. In this cathedral lies the bodies of many famous persons, royal and otherwise. They include St. Erik and his three queens, Linnaeus, the founder of modern systematic botany, and Emanuel Sweden-borg, a man of universal brain reminding brain (reminding us in many ways of Leonardo da Vinci) who became, finally, a Christian mystic and left his doctrine to the Swedenborgian sect, called the New Church.
Among the most interesting developments in brain studies was a finding that corrected the long-held conviction that glucose was the only fuel the brain was capable of using. George Cahill studied brain metabolism in persons who fasted for more than 30 days as part of a weight reduction program. By sampling blood entering and leaving the head, he was able to show that during fasting the brain will readily metabolize fatty acids, the breakdown products from deposits of body fat. Careful intelligence tests before and after the fast failed to show any mental impairment during the period of fasting. Cahill said that in fact the subjects were at least as sharp after fasting, and maybe a bit sharper.
1. If new medical techniques can prolong a healthy life far beyond the present span, who will be selected to remain alive? Society, through law, probably will not leave it to the workings of the marketplace or the caprice of physicians. At the very least, it will try to prevent a black market in hearts and lungs. But if science manages to transplant a human brain, the law will be in serious trouble. Which individual will be considered legally "alive"—the one into whose functioning body the new brain has been deposited, or the one whose brain with all its memories has merely moved to a new home? |
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