Check out this article in Nature that posits that limb regeneration may be a surprisingly simple technical matter. This is real fountain of youth stuff; anything that doesn’t kill you outright could be regrown so long as scar tissue doesn’t form and there’s sufficient time to regrow a body part — any body part — before you die.
What kind of society might this form? One addicted to risk for trivial reasons, one where fear of nonfatal wounds is considered cowardice or neurosis? One where fear is abolished altogether? One where it’s witheld except for those in risky occupations, leading to an age of exploration?
And what about regrowing parts of a brain? How would that affect who you are?
There’s a lot of fun to be found in this one.
(Thanks to Mycoplasm Twitch, the Man of Tomorrow for the link.)
If limb regeneration is technically simple, how far can we be from straight-up limb propagation?
Therefore, an addition to your list of possible worlds:
One (society) in which a man can have as many members as can fit in his baggy, baggy, pants!
Leave it to me to bring the discussion down, down, down…
I heard motherfucker had, like, thirty goddamn dicks.
Pain still exists, and phantom limbs while you wait for your new limbs, and nightmares.
Soldiers who have all their limbs, but also lost all of them. They are forced to fight because they are physically fit, but even cutting their own limbs off is only a temporary reprive.
There would be an increase in the numbers of body modification people who are obsessed with amputees and have the urge to have limbs and digits removed. There would be the people who would do this because they really want to be amputees, and people who do it because they think it would be cool to be an amputee, but if they don’t like it they can always grow it back. Kinda like that new kind of tattoo ink that’s easy to remove.
Issue: Body Modification as Identity.
It all depends, what if it took 5 years for you to grow back a limb?
Then all the more reason for those body modders who are into amputation to get off on their thing.
Body modification as identity? I wish I could comment, but my extreme subjectivity makes it difficult to find a place to begin.
Your extreme subjectivity?
And it doesn’t matter where you begin, so long you cover it all. Go long replies! 🙂
hi, i am doing an educational website for the teen biotech challenge and i was wondering if i may use your picture for the website
-Eric Lichtenberger
Eric, I only recolored that image and tweaked it for my own purposes. You’ll have to talk with Brian Stavely about copyright. I’m using it without permission. The original image on that page is under epimorphosis.
If he says it’s OK to use and you want to use my colored version, of course that’s OK.