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Science

World's First Double Hand Transplant 13

Posted by emmett from the sinister-dexter dept.
rolla writes "World's first double hand transplant was done in france. The BBC has a good story on it." Well, now I know what to do when my hands wear out from the endless typing, guitar and accordion playing.
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World's First Double Hand Transplant

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  • I wish these so called science stories would go a little bit more in depth. I'd be interested to know what kind of techniques are used to bind together the nerves, arteries and such.

    I'm also really curious as to how the patient finally responds to the new body parts. How does the brain and the nervous system react to the foreign parts. Does it take training to begin using the new hands or is this a plug-n-play procedure?

  • You know, I wonder if they'll ever manage brain transplants. Maybe transplants of people with dying bodies but healthy brains into brain-dead people with healthy bodies, for starters. That would probably make headlines instead of getting a yawn.
  • Well, my title says it all. I just wanted to remind everyone how absolutely amazing this kind of medical advance is. I mean, we often feel rather jadedly unexcited when we hear that some new body part can be transplanted, or that monkeys have been cloned by embryo-splitting, or some other scientific breakthrough, but I'd just like to remind everyone that while you can make code do pretty much whatever you want, the Real World is somewhat more difficult :-)

    Now, maybe this can be used to save those of us with early-onset repetitive strain injuries... Quake on!
  • That's tricky ethical ground... (Caveat: if I lost a body part, I'd probably be saying "fuck ethics!"). I mean, even if you could successfully create an anacephalic/microcephalic clone of yourself (not a trivial technical question, BTW), that clone would still legally be considered a person, just as naturally occurring anacephalic babies are. I'm no lawyer, but I suspect keeping them on life support and harvesting body parts from them at will would not be allowed in any jurisdiction...
  • Microsurgery is really taking big strides towards what many poeple believe to be the dawn of prosthetic body parts grown by cloning humans. The cloning process should not only clone a human, but to be able to make the clone a "vegetable". This will be able to prevent the need to actually kill the clone for its body parts. Microsurgery plays its part in the prosthetics by allowing the transplant of body parts and of connection of the nervous system to the neurons of the body part desired. As a result I conclude that life expectancy will rise. By the way, it is very good.
  • If such a body could be grown "sans head", I believe that the legal problem would go out the window.

    A body with everything below the brain stem would not be a legally protectable person under current interpretation of (US) law if My understanding is correct, IANAL though.

    It could be a huge ethical problem though.

    LK
  • >> I doubt anyone would get sick if we all lived in some pristen forest and lived on fruit, humans are the only animal that gets sick all the time

    Only because we take the time and effort to save our weak and infirmed. It's a moral/ethical problem, we can't simply allow people to die because they're imperfect now that we have the ability to save them, but by saving them we cause their genes to be included in the gene pool and allow that infirmity or weakness to get passed into the next generation.

    Also, humans are also the only animal where every society has contact with all of the rest through one means or another, imagine the most off the wall documentary you've ever seen, one where people in the deepest reaches of South America are shown doing tribal dances or whatever, there had to be a western photographer there to get those images. If he had the flu, or measles he would have wiped them all out.

    In the animal kingdon there is not the same level of travel that exposes them to foreign virus infections, and since there is no medicine the sick and weak die off quickly or are killed by predators and eaten. When humans lived a more or less nomadic lifestyle I'd be willing to bet that fewer people were sick then. Primarily because you were either healthy or dead.

    LK
  • This just sets the precedent for the double brain transplants..

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