Neuroscientist: First-Ever Human Head Transplant Is Now Possible 522
dryriver writes "Technical barriers to grafting one person's head onto another person's body can now be overcome, says Dr. Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group. In a recent paper, Canavero outlines a procedure modeled on successful head transplants which have been carried out in animals since 1970. The one problem with these transplants was that scientists were unable to connect the animals' spinal cords to their donor bodies, leaving them paralyzed below the point of transplant. But, says Canavero, recent advances in re-connecting spinal cords that are surgically severed mean that it should be technically feasible to do it in humans. (This is not the same as restoring nervous system function to quadriplegics or other victims of traumatic spinal cord injury.)"
cure for paralysis? (Score:5, Interesting)
So with this technique could you cure paralysis? If you were to make the surgical cuts above the damaged spinal tissue and then attach the old head to a new body without the spinal damage?
So guy or girl dosent matter? (Score:0, Interesting)
I mean common who isn't interested in keeping both halves consistent. Though I guess it would finally be possible for a man to be trapped in a hot female body. And we can all guess how that would go.
Re:Head transplant or body transplant? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm the same person I was 400 years ago. Sure, they replaced my head 3 times, and my body 4 times, but I'm the same person.
(for other examples of this, see Ship of Theseus Paradox [wikipedia.org])
Re:head transplant, or body transplant? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or like a terrible pump design. Intelligent design my ass, more like idiotic design.
70+ years of continuous operation for a pump isn't TOO terrible.
That's only true if you restrict your analysis to a single, central pump. But no "intelligently designed" fluid-distribution system has just one pump. A distributed set of small, specialized pumps (and a redundant pipe system that can route around pump failures) is how any halfway-intelligent engineer would do the job.
There are species of animals that do have multiple pumps. (Google it. ;-)
Of course, this could be considered support for the theory that we (and all vertebrates) were merely prototype designs. We worked well enough that the Designer let us live, while He proceeded with the design of the main species that the world was designed for. There's some debate about which species that might have been. I've always sorta liked the explanations for why the giant squid was the pinnacle of creation on this planet, but there are good arguments that our world was primarily created as a habitat for mosquitoes or earthworms or various other small critters that vastly outnumber us.
Re:The body can affect the mind (Score:4, Interesting)
This does not mean the drug changes who I am.
I wonder then, why are there so many instances of insulin deprived individuals exhibiting uncharacteristically violent/aggressive behaviors, or slipping into comas.
Something as simple as an over/underactive pancreas can dramatically alter the behavior of a person. Last I checked, that organ wasn't located in the brain.
Re: head transplant, or body transplant? (Score:4, Interesting)
In theory, yes - but it'd need a life-support complex that would fill a room.
There was a short sci-fi play on the subject, about a very rich and very old lady who survived crippling illness in just such a manner: She lived as a head-on-a-stick, connected to a huge machine in the room below that kept her alive. Fixed in place and able to interact only through a pair of robotic arms, she became depressed and attempted suicide - something the designers of the machine had forseen, and taken measures to prevent. Her death would mean no more machine, and no more research grants.
This was written pre-internet though. You could probably find plenty of WoW players now who would barely notice the change.
Re:head transplant, or body transplant? (Score:5, Interesting)
My particular application requirements for your Knees 2.0 are that they gradually increase in size from initial deployment in a 12 inch vertical system, and remain appropriate during stepwise modification toward a 6 foot vertical system with corresponding multiples of mass, without at any point losing functionality, or requiring further human interaction while re-optimizing for the changes in scale.
How's your option looking for this?
Re:The body can affect the mind (Score:0, Interesting)
I have no interest in discussing souls or chakras or other BS.
No one here was proposing to discuss straw either, so we can set all that aside.
However, the notion that your mind is wholly centered in the brain is about as obsolete as the notion that it rests in the heart. The endocrine system has a huge effect on emotion and mood as does the autonomous nervous system. 95% of your body's supply of serotonin comes from bacteria in your gut. There is a network of nearly 100 million neurons that control gut function which acts independently of the brain, and the two communicate in part through the vagus nerve. Stimulation to that nerve has been considered as a treatment for chronic depression that doesn't respond to medication.
This does not mean the drug changes who I am.
Then who are you? Just the lightning in the meat? You dismiss the influence of your body's chemistry too much in that, especially for someone who considers the soul to be BS. If you are the product of your body, then you should be willing to accept that you're a product of your whole body, and changing the chemical inputs is just as fundamental as changing the experiences that shape the layout of neurons in your brain.
But if that would give you some sort of existential angst, feel free to disregard it. It's not like I want to talk someone into stopping medication because of some misguided quasi-religious sense of self.
Re:head transplant, or body transplant? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can certainly run a marathon on an artificial knee. You can't play pro sports, but you're talking about the top .00001% of all players. If you go down, there's somebody behind you who hasn't had to do a length recovery, and who hasn't had a knee replacement literally rammed into his bone.
Knee replacements aren't actually all that great yet; they've got a lifespan shorter than your original knee. Cartilage takes a pounding. My own personal gripe with the knee is the ligaments, which are exposed and subject to tremendous leverage: my replacement is stronger than the original. (Even though it's actually made of more biological parts, rather than a purely artificial one.)
The real problem with the knee can't be fixed by trying to replace its parts, but to reconsider the way the whole joint is arranged. Most mammals use their ankle joints for purposes that we put our knees to, and walk on their toes instead of on their heels. We mis-adapted that design to bipedal walking, rather than redesigning from scratch, which is what a good engineer would have done. Had we evolved from ground-dwellers, it might have worked out better on the knees, but we came from tree-dwellers who went back to the ground, and some good ideas were lost in the transitions.
Re:head transplant, or body transplant? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment [wikipedia.org]
It stopped working awhile back, but it lasted longer than 120. I actually remember the news stories when she hit her last birthday and then again when she died. From everything they reported she had said, the lady sounded like quite a character.