Know that strange tingle one gets when something bad is about to happen? Well, that happened to me when I was hunting down a nifty bit of science to feed my fellow authors’ Muses.
A group of neuroscientists when and revived 32 pig brains 4 hours after death. These brains were harvested from a slaughterhouse, so no pigs were killed for this experiment, and the scientists had termination protocols ready, just in case there was any indication these brains showed awareness. Ethics for the win.
But the scrupulous practices of the researchers in this experiment notwithstanding, there is something deeply unsettling about reviving dead brains. I’ve still got the heebie-jeebies.
Now, before I go off on the zombie tangent, this research has amazing practical applications for medical and technological science. A lot of medical conditions have evidence of cell death in the brain and being able to slow or reverse necrosis in the brain is amazing. Hell, even the ability to preserve and reanimate a brain will be a major breakthrough in cryogenics, which is the exact plot device I needed for a book I’m currently plotting.
But zombies. The capacity for this research to go off the rails to some evil end is astronomical.
Because this is how you get zombies.
-T.A. Creech
Science in the pursuit of fiction.