A new Y Combinator startup offers a high-tech embalming process to preserve brains postmortem, presumably making them available for examination (and digitization) by future generations. You can pay Nectome $10,000 — which is refundable if you change your mind beforehand — to have your brain preserved forever. The only catch is the process, according to Vanity Fair, because, per Nectome’s Robert McIntyre it is “100 percent fatal.” However, Nectome, created by McIntyre and co-founder Michael McCanna, has already received a $960,000 federal grant. It will work by connecting people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine and pumping anesthetized patients full of embalming fluids. This is a deadly experience, but McIntyre says it is why they “are uniquely situated among the Y Combinator companies.” The company plans on pitching itself to investors at Demo Day next week. “The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide,” McIntyre said to Vanity Fair. “Product-market fit is people believing that it works.” Another obstacle the company faces is the seemingly impossible task of reviving memories found in dead brain tissue. However, the company already has a handful of willing guinea pigs: 25 in total. Its co-founders believe Nectome will comply with California’s End of Life Option Act, which legalizes physician-assisted suicide for patients with terminal illnesses. Y Combinator president Sam Altman has already signed up for the service, saying, “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,” according to Vanity Fair.
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