THE DOCTOR moved around to look at the left temple. "Doesn't leave much of a human being, does it?"
"It doesn't even leave much of an animal," Miss Peters said. "He's alive, but that's the best you can say for him. (Now swallow, Paul. That's it.) Even an ameba can find food for itself."
"Yeah. Even a single cell is better off than he is. Chop out a man's forebrain and he's nothing. It's a case of the whole being less than the sum of its parts."
"I'm glad they outlawed the operation on mental patients," Miss Peters said, with a note of disgust in her voice.
Dr. Benwick said: "It's worse than it looks. Do you know why the anti-lobotomists managed to get the bill passed?"
"Let's drink some milk now, Paul. No, Doctor; I was only a little girl at that time."
"It was a matter of electro-encephalographic records. They showed that there was electrical activity in the prefrontal lobes even after the nerves had been severed, which could mean a lot of things; but the A-L supporters said that it indicated that the forebrain was still capable of thinking."
Miss Peters looked a little ill. "Why—that's horrible! I wish you'd never told me." She looked at the lump of vegetablized human sitting placidly at the table. "Do you suppose he's actually thinking, somewhere, deep inside?"
"Oh, I doubt it," Benwick said hastily. "There's probably no real self-awareness, none at all. There couldn't be."
"I suppose not," Miss Peters said, "but it's not pleasant to think of."