Out of curiosity, if Soylent really does provide every nutrient the body requires, would that mean a user would no longer have to defecate?
My reasoning is if every nutrient is absorbed and used, there is no physical waste left, and all toxins and byproducts would be expelled through urine.
Since I'm pretty un-connected to this account, going to start undergraduate at Cornell. While it may not be Harvard/Yale/Princeton, I'm not going to complain (however there is still some element of jealousy/annoyance).
What is HN's opinion of Cornell, especially vs other Ivies?
This has to be one of the most intellectually backwards arguments I have ever heard. It is almost on par with arguments presented by christian fundamentalists.
Being brain-dead is essentially being dead. Hospitals and surgeons will not operate on you unless you are not expected to recover, or regain consciousness. Being brain-dead, it is also very unlikely that you feel pain. Reflexes can easily still be active even with brain-death, leading to convulsions during surgery. If the author had ever seen a serious car-accident victim in a coma, he wouldn't have second thoughts about organ donation. In his blog post, he is insinuating that you are still a normal, living, conscious human being. You aren't.
Having grown up in a family of medical doctors, I find this blog post appalling.
EDIT: As thebigshane pointed out, my wording is indeed terrible, I wrote my response in a hurry, and I will not edit it to avoid confusion. I do not have any professional medical education, all I know in this field is derived from in-depth conversations and discussions with my parents, whom are both medical doctors. Brain death is indeed classified by the Harvard criteria, but these also include the patient being non-responsive to external stimuli, such as pain (which contradicts the blog post's claim of convulsions during surgery due to the lack of anesthesia).
My reasoning is if every nutrient is absorbed and used, there is no physical waste left, and all toxins and byproducts would be expelled through urine.