A biotech startup wants to replace laboratory animals with “headless” bodies grown from human cells. And that isn’t even the weirdest thing they want to do.
The company, R3 Bio, wants to replace lab animals with these living “organ sacks.” They would contain all of the typical human organs, except for the brain. That way, the bodies wouldn’t be able to think or feel pain.
The company’s co-founder, Alice Gilman, recently told Wired their goal is to use these “headless” bodies as sources of blood, tissue, and organs.
“We think replacement is probably better than repair when it comes to treating diseases or regulating the aging process in the human body,” said Boyang Wang, CEO of Immortal Dragons, a Singapore-based longevity fund that’s invested in R3. “If we can create a nonsentient, headless bodyoid for a human being, that will be a great source of organs.”
Before they begin growing these human “organ sacks,” R3 will first make monkey “organ sacks.” Gilman said it’s already possible to create mouse “organ sacks” that lack a brain. She also denied that they had actually done this, yet.
In addition to using these “headless” human bodies for organ farming, researchers could also use them for drug toxicity testing. This would replace the current process of using research animals.
The development of these “headless” human bodies may also have another, more bizarre, purpose
According to a follow-up investigation by MIT Technology Review, Futurism reports, the founders of R3 Bio are secretly working toward a much more ambitious objective: building complete “brainless clones” of the human body into which elderly or sick people could eventually implant their brains.
Despite an insider making the claim, the company has pushed back against the idea that it wants to create brainless human clones.
R3 Bio said in a statement to Tech Review that its founder “never made any statement regarding hypothetical ‘non-sentient human clones’ [that] would be carried by surrogates.” The statement also claimed that “any allegations of intent or conspiracy to create human clones or humans with brain damage are categorically false.”
Of course, at this point, all of this discussion is currently just hypothetical. Or at least, that’s what the company is claiming.