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Science

Extreme medicine: Head Transplants 238

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-scalpels dept.
Ry Jones writes "The Sunday Times is reporting that people like Bill Gates and Christopher Reed will soon be able to get head transplants. " Interesting idea, and as the article points out, it's been a goal for transplant science for the past couple decades. I'd like to have my head meet Arnold's body.
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Extreme medicine: Head Transplants More

Extreme medicine: Head Transplants

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  • Who supplies the body? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I mean, think about it. For your head to be transplanted to another body, that body has to lose its head. For you to live, someone else has to die. Preferrably someone in the prime of life!

    I suppose rich people don't care about such issues, though.

  • Should that be body transplant? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know it's pendantic but
    heart transplant -> replacement heart
    head transplant -> replacement head
    Or is it a case of
    heart trans. -> heart moves to another body
    head trans. -> head moves to another body.

    The more I think about it the more confused I get.

    Just a simple A.C.

  • Great Idea!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lets convince Bill to have a *human* head transplanted onto his body! He might enjoy the change!

  • Bah, mere child's play! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just letting Bill Gates know that i've been doing this sort of thing for YEARS now. So if he wants a new head, i'm willing to cut him a deal. Say, $500 million for a near perfect Photoshop head job - most people don't even notice the lack of a 3rd dimension! Also, I will donate his current head to a good cause (eg, local bowling alley) Tom

  • Bionic man? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wonder what ramifications this has for replacing the weak human body with a machine. I can't wait to have integrated web access and a C compiler in my chest. Windows CE for humans maybe?

  • You guys are missing the obvious.. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, why not, after you get to a certain age, just clone your own body, maybe it could be genetically reengineered to remove certain defects like arthritis and diabetes from the DNA and then grow a new body sans head/brain. Then you could just attach your head to the genetically identical body and not have to worry about rejection.
    • His work on monkeys, which started over 20 years ago, culminated in the full head transplants. The animals survived for more than a week with no impairment of mental faculties before they were put down,for humane reasons.

    Well, enough, but I'm not a medical scientist. Can someone explain how one evaluates the mental acuity of a paralyzed monkey???

    Also, apparently it's inhumane to allow a monkey to live like this, but it's great for people!

  • Even easier... institute the death penalty for spamming and malicious port scanning.

    Time to get out my copy of Niven's "The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton".
  • You don't need to kill somebody -- just clone yourself a brainless body and move into that.

    The only problem is that you'd have to have some lee-time, say about 21 years (you want to be able to drink, right?) before you could move in and your head would start looking *really* old after a while.

    ----

  • You forgot: 7) Yeah, but the real question is, will this operation make my head run Linux? and, of course: 8) F1RsT P05T D00D!!!!!!
  • 10) Just imagine how many MP3s you could store in all those brains....

    Hmm... you could get a different song stuck in each head...
  • _You_ forgot
    8) If I get a bunch of heads and stick them all over my body can I turn myself into a Beowulf cl... *WHACK* ow! *WHACK* hey! *WHACK* eek!
  • Better yet, one that was actually MST3Ked!
  • *grumble* and you had me looking up book-ographies to remind myself of the title ;)
  • ``If you cut off my head, what would I say, me and my, me and my head or me and my body? What right has my head to call itself me? What right?''
  • Even if it becomes cheap and you can reconnect the nerve tissue so you aren't parylysed, there will be a problem:

    not enough bodies.

    Because
    1) not that many people die w/ their body in a perfectly healthy state, those that do would also have had to agree to be used, and would have to be rushed to storage fast. There would be hardly any that would meet all the requirements.
    2) If it becomes cheap enough, there will be lots of competition for a few bodies, and there could be a black market.

    So, we need artificial bodies.

    Actually what we really need is nanotech that will keep you healthy forever like in "The First Immortal" by James Halperin, but that's another story.
  • I read this over the weekend, bear in mind that they don't try to connect up any nerves or anything (except those required to live) so you still can't feel or move anything below your neck after the procedure.

    --

  • "RICH PEOPLE WHO WANT HEAD TRANSPLANT'S SUCK!"

    (arrow on chest pointing upwards) "DO NOT REMOVE!"



    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • You want to see the next world war? More genocide? more hate? more corrupt politicians? more abuses by greedy corporations? more El Nino's? more boundless human stupidity?

    You want to live through how many more cold and flu seasons?

    60-90 years is enough for me. All the people I know over 80 are just sitting around, waiting to die.


    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • HELP! I'm on BACKWARDS!

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • a life of quiet dignity

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Right, it's sort of like taking the driver out of one car, and putting him in the other car, but there's vaseline all over the steering wheel. . .
    (ok. I need some lunch, blood sugar getting low)

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Wow. It would be great to get transplanted onto a black body. Imagine what a tremendous schlong you'd have!

    But then there's all those sticky racial discrimination laws. Do they apply to Mr. White-Head/Black-Body?

    This line of thinking get's really perverse, like (assuming we fix the spinal nerve connection problem so many thoughtful /.-ers have reminded us of, over and over and over) what if people use family members as donors and stuff (for immunological compatability), could a guy get away without paying inheritance tax if he tranplants his head onto his son's body?
    If a guy transplants his head onto a woman's body, which restroom does he use?
    If he transplants his head onto a girl's body, and looks at himself naked in a mirror, is it statutory rape? Takes a picture of himself, is it child pornography?

    Oh DAMN! They didn't tell me that the new body wasn't circumcised! Why didn't they take care of that BEFORE they grafted my head on there!

    Like a virgin, touched for the very first time, again.

    It just goes on and on.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • (assuming we fix the spinal nerve connection problem so
    many thoughtful /.-ers have reminded us of, over and over and over)

    and over and over and over and over. . .

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • The Collapse of the Berlin Wall == the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and the eventual sale of cheap weapons of mass destruction to every tin-pot despot in the world, along with the economic decay causing the death or economic enslavement (by the Russian Mafia) of millions, and the fallout being dozens of bloody ethnic conflicts: Chechnya, Bosnia, Kazakastan, the aftermath in Afganistan, etc. And now China's getting punchy.
    Beginnings of a new space station == Reagan declared that we'd do this Kennedy-esque "within a decade", back in 1984. With the problems with our partnership with Russia, I would bet you a dollar that this new space station will not be completed by the schedule they have today. And the original schedule was 1994, and it was supposed to be much, much larger. Mir was abandonded last week. NASA's budget is being destroyed. Humanity's destination is not going to be the stars, unless we end up hitching a ride on some extraterrestrial slave-ship or something.
    End of the Cold War == (see above statements about the berlin wall)
    Cloning == rich people get to take over the world
    boom of the Internet == (see above statement on cloning)

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • what are they going to do with his old head? I'd kinda like to kick it around a while.
  • a 500 year old woman with a 25 year old body
    ....unpleasant thought

    I know it was a joke, but why would a old mind on a shiny, supple, firm new body be unpleasant? I'd prefer an intelligent, wise, beautiful woman to a stupid beautiful woman any day.

    ... now the fact that she's paralyzed still leaves me with Mr. Right but hey. :-)
  • You're thinking of Telomerase, and the number of times a cell can divide is called the "Hayflick Limit." Nanotech is the horse I'm betting on for immortality. Throne of Skulls here I come!
    --Conquering the Earth Since 1978.
  • Maybe it's because Bill Gates is not a person (he's really the Devil...but don't tell anybody) and nobody knows who Christopher Reed is (it's supposed to be Christopher Reeves). However, I can't connect either (Connection refulsed). Here are the last few entries of my traceroute (not that I really know what's going on) :)

    10 linx-l0.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.10) 307.411 ms 299.245 ms 313.913 ms
    11 access2-telehouse.telehouse.bt.net (194.74.16.41) 335.709 ms 316.711 ms 319.043 ms
    12 M007501-News-International.access2.telehouse.bt.ne t (62.172.12.48) 314.523 ms 313.108 ms 309.45 ms
    13 143.252.80.112 (143.252.80.112) 355.574 ms 1203.01 ms 1962.31 ms


    <tim><
  • i think someone w/ a brain disease could donate their body...

    do you think we have reached immortality w/ this?
    now that we can just get a new body brain disease is the only thing that stands between us and immortality.
  • to have such a fine new head.
  • Has anyone read the article indeed?

    First of all, after the transplant, the person will be paralysed from the neck down, due to the fact that the nerves can't be reconnected. This means it will only be useful for people that are already paralysed. It will only prolong their life-span, but they remain paralysed.

    Second of all, nobody has to be killed in order to find a body. Normal transplants happen every day using organs from people who died. Why is this so different? If they only take the heart or the whole body? You're dead anyway :)

    Kind regards,
    Mark Wormgoor
  • A) Does anyone have any other source for this claim? Is this what it claims or just hype?

    B) If it is true that we could easily move a head this well and given the fact that we can clean blood using dialysis machines, oxygenate it and maybe even add nutrients how much more difficult would it be to keep a head on artificial life support?
  • Wouldn't that be odd, if your loved one died and his or her body was transplanted to your rich next door neighbor?
  • When Bill G. gets a head transplant, what part do they throw away?
  • ... and of course the religeous reich would have a shit-fit about legal "kiddie" porn. Gotta love the clash of science and religon.

    This will be suppressed, of course. Just like "miracle" drugs, you'll have to go out of the country for it.

    Most likely, it'll happen in some third world country where the people don't matter anyway. You may end up with a different body color, but that dosn't really matter if you're rich. (Ex. Michael Jackson)

    --Dan

  • When a fertilized egg is created, the egg should be allowed to get to the 8-cell stage and then 7 of them should be frozen in liquid nitrogen. As the egg->person ages and is nearing the end, the brain could be transplanted instead of the head.

    I still think it's somewhat of a creepy idea...

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • ...and say "doctah"...

  • I can just see it now...

    "A man went to a party where he was offered something to drink by a cute girl. The drink was spiked with some pretty heavy drugs. When he woke up, he was in a bathtub full of ice and his HEAD was gone! He had the words 'you're screwed, sucker' written in lipstick on his chest! This is very dangerous, there's a big black market for heads, my husband is a firefighter and he sees this happening all the time!! Send this message on to all your friends!" blah blah blah.

    better heads than kidneys, I say.

  • So who is to say they won't be able to reattach the nerves in 10-20 years? An application of nanotechnology (slashdot buzzword #1), perhaps?

    I'm 22 years old. What if in twenty years I just donated some DNA, sperm, whatever they want to start a lobotomized clone (slashdot buzzword #2) of myself?

    When I'm 64 (hrm, sounds like a beatles song) and my lungs and liver are giving out from years of smoking and drinking, just transplant my head to the clone and I'm all set.

    Of course, no one has mentioned the problem of Alzheimer's disease or any of the other seemingly age-related dementia-type diseases. I understand that this is being pioneered to give paralyzed people a normal lifespan since their organs fail earlier but the life-extension option is definetly an option and shouldn't be dismissed.

    Even if they couldn't reattach the nerves, some people may want to live paralyzed than die. After all, death is final.

    Hell, why even reattach the body? Make some mech and put the head and some blood filtering device inside and use what muscle movements the head does have to control it. There are a lot of muscles in the face. Wasn't this the plot of some Robocop movie?
  • The question has already been raised here of "where would we get the bodies"? We need to keep in mind how existing transplants (of which there is already a parts shortage) work.

    1: Joe Dyingman has a bad heart. Sally Dyingwoman is going blind. And Bobby Dyingyouth has a failing liver. They lie in a hospital, close to death, blindness, and general Bad Things.

    Meanwhile, Dennis Drunkdriver careens through the night, soused to the gills. Suddenly, Dennis loses control (big surprise) and hits the convenient telephone pole. Because he was in his hot new convertible and strapped int his seat, his body is not injured severely. However, Dennis' head is neatly skewered on the lineman's step sticking out of the pole (I know they're not that far down, but work with me here). Dennis' brain is turned into mush. The paramedics arrive almost instantly, but Dennis is brain-dead.

    Since the rest of him is in good shape, and Dennis' drivers' license says he's an organ donor (as should we all), they race Dennis to the hospital, where he is determined to actually be brain-dead. At this point, a team of surgeons start working to remove the parts of Dennis that he doesn't need any more.

    While this is happening, our three patients get "the word" that a donor has finally been found. They are rushed into surgery prep, and as Dennis' organs are removed, the organs are zipped away to each awaiting surgery, where they are placed into Joe, Sally, and Bobby. Three people have been given their lives (and in one case, their eyesight) back as the last act of a dying man.

    So now we can but Dennis' whole body on one aging or paralyzed person, who will (at this point) remain paralyzed, but have healthier organs. No thanks. That is what I refer to as "a significant waste of resources". Maybe I'm selfish (or just cynical), but I'd rather save multiple people's lives with my body parts than give Christopher Reeve a slighly dumpy, thirtysomething new shell to live in.

    - -Josh Turiel
  • No, no, no, you misunderstand. Dennis was skewered through the _side_ of his head... His retinas were unharmed and just peachy!
    - -Josh Turiel

  • Sorry, but a bad movie starring these two entered my mind (which itself could use a better body BTW).

    Post if you got the reference.
    Hint: The Simpsons' writers used it, with Homer and Mr. Burns (snicker)...
    -----

  • I want a new butt, this one has a crack in it.

  • I heard something about this on NPR one day. I think it said that Einstein's brain is sitting in a tupperware dish in the trunk of someone's car.


  • Ok, well, *just* do that.

    But could people get really immortal by s/old body/new body/g ?

    a 500 year old woman with a 25 year old body
    ....unpleasant thought


    The scariest part of that post was the 'g' flag... just how many old bodies do you have?
  • Second of all, nobody has to be killed in order to find a body. Normal transplants happen every day using organs from people who died. Why is this so different? If they only take the heart or the whole body? You're dead anyway :)


    The thing is, for a donor body to be acceptable, the cause of death for the donor would have to be from something above the neck...anything else would deem the body unsuitable for transplant..
    Hmm.. Donor dies of a heart attack. Could a heart transplant be performed successfully on the body, allowing it to now be used for a full body transplant?


    I wonder how long a body can be dead before undergoing a transplant..



    Other interesting black market implications. Sure, yer gonna be paralyzed, but does that really make a difference since you now have [insert name of celebrity idol here]'s body?

    C
    _____________________________________________ ________________

  • The Mind's I [amazon.com] spends a story or two talking about the challenges that a brain/body transplant would cause. Well worth reading!

    One problem is that the brain is wired to make your particular body work. It'd have no idea how to send the right sort of signals to another body. Life's a bitch when you can't get the heart to pump in co-ordination...

  • Here's the answer then.

    I get my head swapped with one of the Barbi Twins. I get her body for awhile, play with her boobs, then I get my body back, just in time for her to slap my face (which is now re-attached to my body).

    But would it all be worth it ?
    .
  • Hmm,.

    Monica gets body,..
    Clinton gets head,..

    Sorry.
    I couldn't resist.
  • Isn't that a sample in a Skinny Puppy song? On Bites, or Remission I think... Always wondered where that came from.

  • obSlashdot Post: (Score:3)

    by kuro5hin ( 8501 ) on Monday August 30, 1999 @11:55PM (#1715797) Homepage
    1) Wow, imagine a whole roomful of heads transplanted onto one large body! It'd be a bitchin' Beowulf!

    2) Dood, wasn't this posted before?

    3) Hemos spelled Christopher Reeve's name wrong. He should learn to write english blah blah blah...

    4) The link doesn't work (oh wait, that one's been covered already)

    5) This surgical technique should be Open Sourced, so that anyone can do it, not just millionaires. If we could all open up the patient's neck and fix any problems ourselves, and submit patches back to the patient, this process would be faster, and more stable. But by having a few "elite" surgeons working alone in a "clean O.R." we will all end up with bloated necks that don't even let us move the rest of our body.

    6) [insert name of any old random unrelated thing] sucks.

  • The body's immune system would reject the head, necessitating those unpleasant anti-rejection drugs. Immune system cells (like white blood cells) are produced in the bone marrow of large bones but not the skull.

    Interestingly, there's been some recent work on transplanting bone marrow at the same time as an organ transplant to try to eliminate the need for those anti-rejection drugs. Results are promising, but still a ways from being completely sucessful.

  • the person will be paralysed from the neck down, due to the fact that the nerves can't be reconnecte

    That's obviously ordinary voluntary motor muscles, but what about all the autonomous nervous system? Doesn't the heart, stomach, and other organs get their impulses from the brain? Or can the heart keep on ticking w/o nerve connection or the brain?
    Anyway, the ultimate organ donor.

    Fantasy: Just keep Gates head in a life support solution in a jar, w/ the support machine needing a reboot every three days, and it comes back JUST in time before the head snuffs, while a direct audio implant continuously reads: "this life support machine comes with no warrenty, express or implied, as to merchantability or suitability for any advertised purpose", Do not make illegal copies of this brain.

    Chuck
  • Isn't it a body transplant? I mean, I'll always be in my head not in my body, so what's new to me after the transplant is the body, not the head...
  • I have seen articles that suggest that motorcycle helmets may or may not be a major benefit in reducing overall death/injury rates, because although the helmet is great if you are in an accident, it also makes it more likely you will be in an accident, because of the greatly reduced vision and hearing you have with the helmet on.

    (Of course, I don't ride motorcycles, so I wouldn't know...)
  • ...he had developed a blood-cooling system that meant a living head could be disconnected from its blood supply for up to an hour without ill-effect.

    Wow, now that would be one really wild head trip. It'd beat the heck out of any drug that makes you have an "out of body" experience.

    "The voices in my head say crazy things"
  • 300 years? I saw a PBS special some time ago that suggested the brain, with average deteriation would function normally for 120 years. After that the reserve of fresh brain cells becomes noticably low and senility starts to take hold.

    Of course the environment is a factor. Some people go senile long before their brain reaches 120 years of age due to environmental factors which reduce the amount of viable brain cells in their head. No I don't mean alcohol either.

    Just my $.02 worth.
  • Finally!! I've got a sick mind and don't want
    to deprive my body from a good one!
  • Ok, people have mentioned cloning a headless body, but then the head, after being moved to the new body would look too old for it. Why not clone a body without a brain and spinal column, and then move just your brain and spinal cord to the new body, this way you will have your face matching the age of the cloned body.

    Also, if you went bald in your old body, you could have your hair back for a while...
  • Actually it's "Reeve".

  • I know it was a joke, but why would a old mind on a shiny, supply, firm new body by unpleasant?

    Because the technique described is for a head swap, not a brain swap. I suspect the wiring for the latter would be considerably more complicated. Now conjure up the mental image of a 500 year old head on a 25 year old body...

  • I think the stuff is called telemorose or something along those lines. I saw a report on it that predicted that within 10 years we might be able to take a pill that would restore the telemorose on our DNA and essentially let us live forever. Apparently this would also prevent alztimers(i know that's spelled way wrong). Your brain does start to deteriorate after about age 20 and I doubt this process would stop it. Someone else mentioned that the human brain is thought to be good for atleast 300 years, so who knows. Maybe I'll get to be 30 for the next 250+ years. I just hope it prevents male pattern baldness too :)
  • The heart can keep going for a short period of time w/o intervention from the brain, but I don't think you would be able to live out the rest of your life w/o your brain talking to your heart, not to mention other organs like, lungs, liver, kidneys. You probally could get a pacemaker to keep the heart going, a respirator for your lungs, dialasis for your kidneys, and an i.v. drip of all the nutrients your body needs. I think I'd personally rather be dead than live life like that, but then again, if i'm ever in that situation i might change my mind...
  • Even though your head may get transplanted to a "healthy" body, your brain still continues dying as you get older. Granted this may make lifespans of 150 years possible, who would really want to live that long? Most elderly I've talked to and known would be happy to go at the ripe old age of 90. Another 60 years of only having a head with and no feeling in your body may be considered inhumane.
  • Sorry, the header should have read: Re:It still won't guarantee immortality
  • Arnold from "Happy Days"?

  • heads (Score:1)

    by Jeremi ( 14640 )
    Here in the hall of heads
    You look through the keyhole
    This is the hall of heads
    One step through the doorway

    Roll out that special head
    This is our favorite one
    Please don't try to leave
    Don't leave the hall of heads

    Hide underneath the porch
    Hide down behind the furnace
    You can't run away
    Your feet won't let you run

    You can't get away
    You can't really hide
    Once you hear the call
    The song of the hall of heads

    You can't run away
    Your feet won't help you run
    You can't run away
    Out of the hall of heads


    (written by They Might Be Giants)
  • You'll need to find the jumper settings, first. They're located near the second and vertebrae, but the effect of flipping them can be reproduced through ingestion of massive amounts of coffee.
  • The head and body would of course reject each other, since they'd both see the other part as something alien.
    --

  • Why just take the heart or lungs from a pig? Why not take the whole body? It would be so cool to see Bill's head on Babe the pig :-)

    Ok, ok, some realism, please. How about Bill's head on a 800 pound gorilla [sfsu.edu]?

  • Hemos, that is great butt, I would still like to be able to wipe my own ass. It is such a price to pay Arnold... -AP
  • I think I'm going to be sick.
    Anyway I would prefer to see Bill Gate's head on a stick.

  • blood-cooling system (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday August 31, 1999 @02:50AM (#1715819) Homepage Journal
    Oh wow. That blood-cooling system would probably let me overclock my brain!

  • An even more exciting use for this technology (Score:3)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Tuesday August 31, 1999 @12:13AM (#1715820) Homepage
    Robert J White, an American neurosurgeon, said he had developed a blood-cooling system that meant a living head could be disconnected from its blood supply for up to an hour without ill-effect. forget head transplants. With this device, I might be able to make it through all the meetings my manager keeps scheduling.
    --Shoeboy

  • Ewwwww (Score:1)

    by Otto ( 17870 )
    Okay, what's the point? So the head lives longer. Since you can't regrow nerves (yet), it can't move.. I can't think of anyone who would WANT to go on longer given that:
    a) you can't move
    b) you're a freak
    c) you probably stuck in the hospital for what's left of your life

    ---

  • Sure, they have to find a fresh body without a head in order to perform the operation. I would not be surprised to see some surgeons suggesting that the airbags must be removed from all cars. That would provide them with an endless supply of bodies.

    But what will they do with the old body once the head has been moved to the new one? Should it be buried (funeral, grave, and so on) or should it be dumped as waste?

    Yummy!

  • ... and no, i wasn't drunk or on drugs!

    The alarm clock went off one morning, and none of my higher brain functions were functional. i somehow managed to turn off the alarm clock, and when i woke up again later it had fixed itself (:

    -----

  • Possibly the first part could be solved with DNA synthesizers (which we've had for many years), but that will require the human genome project to be completed so we can turn the correct flags on and off.

    NAME

    gdna - GNU project DNA sequencer
    SYNOPSIS
    gdna [ option | genome ]
    WARNING
    The information in this man page is an extract from the full documentation of the GNU DNA sequencer, and is limited to the meaning of the options.

    This man page is not kept up to date except when volunteers want to maintain it. If you find a discrepancy between the man page and the software, please check the Info file, which is the authoritative documentation.

    If we find that the things in this man page that are out of date cause significant confusion or complaints, we will stop distributing the man page. The alternative, updating the man page when we update the Info file, is impossible because the rest of the work of maintaining GNU DNA leaves us no time for that. The GNU project regards man pages as obsolete and should not let them take time away from other things.

    For complete and current documentation, refer to the Info file `gdna' or the manual Using and Porting GNU DNA (for version 2.0). Both are made from the Texinfo source file gdna.texinfo.

    and so on...

    -----

  • When I was in high school and read Time Enough for Love (at least I think that was the correct title) by Heinlein, I thought "There's no way that this sort of thing could ever happen, but what if it did?" This Heinlein story is about an old, rich man with an active mind trapped in an inactive body. They basically transplanted not his head, but his brain and spinal column into the body of a mid-20s shapely secretary.

    The book was an exploration by a dirty old man into the what-ifs of transsexual identity, and not a tretise on the future possibilities of immortality, but the issues raised are pertinant - would you only get a body of the same sex as your own? What if the only available body is of the opposite sex? Is a spinal cord transplatation feasible? If so, it would solve the nerve-attachment problem that would do away with the paralysm. But could you ever be sure of what was you and what was the body? In the book, the guy had the host body's personality riding around in his head, and he died in less than a year (I can't remember exactly what from, but probably a combination of rejection and other things). Is this really a long-term solution? The monkeys lived a week before they were put down. That's definately not a real test for length of life trials.

    I don't know. I might prefer to see Futurama's Hall of Heads before we get (as my husband said) "the attack of the wheelchair bound killer decomposing head creatures." And most kids think it's bad enough to kiss their grandparents on the cheek. Imagine visiting your great-great grandmother - a 140 year old head on a 50 year old body. I just shudder to think about it.
  • If you put a man's head on a woman's body, which bathroom should he/she/it use?

    If you robbed a bank and then got a new body, could they still throw you in jail? Couldn't you save your old body and have them jail it instead?

    If your head ran Windows and your new body ran DR-DOS, would that make a rejection more likely?

    Would a big ol' bolt through your neck become a sign of affluence, so that the not-quite-rich got fakes installed as a status symbol?

    Could you get spare heads, like Kryten? Would they be hot-swappable?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

  • Bruce Sterling did an interesting book, Holy Fire,
    on a related subject a few years ago: an old wealthy woman got some sort of medical treatment which would rejuvenate her body to its early 20s ... and promptly took off, vanished from the world, and became a hedonistic drifter. Seems that
    the rejuvenation also caused her body to get pumped with chemicals that her brain no longer knew how to cope with. :)
  • It's just a little funny to see a /. item about head transplants and Einstein's HEAD right next to it. How about THAT head transplant? Now if we could just find Marilyn Monroe's body...

  • I saw some of Dr. Whites early work on the Learning Channel. It was some special about the dangers of banning research.

    In 1971 (not a typo) after the first full body transplant, a law was passed (US) that banned research into brain, head, and full body transplants.

    One of the names mention who could benefit from a full body transplant was Stephen Hawking. His body is dying, his brain is not.

    This show was on right after the UK banned cloning research a couple years ago. I don't remember the name.

  • probably both unless of course you take a body appart and reassemble it using the same parts :)
  • Of course with advances in transplantation techniques, it would not necessarily have to be a human body. After all there's already some experimentation going on with pigs hearths and other organs, so why not an entire pig body.
    Quite a funny idea. I suddenly get these visions of these monty python like creatures (i'm refering to the opening sequence animations).

    But even if only human bodies would be possible I don't mind. There's plenty of people dying of braindamage (for instance because of a car crash). While the head in those situation is not much use, the body can still be reused. I have no problem with this. In fact my body is available should such a thing ever happen to me.
  • ... you *all* forgot:

    9) How much faster will I be able to play q3test?

  • sorry, i could not resist... ;)
    you can call me a [beep]ing [beep] of a [beep] beep] if u like.

    ...but you are right, ms & gates is nothing to talk about all the time.

    about that vxd thing: uhm... does that matter?

    have a lot of fun.

  • Then you could just attach your head to the genetically identical body

    Ok, well, *just* do that.

    But could people get really immortal by s/old body/new body/g ?

    a 500 year old woman with a 25 year old body
    ....unpleasant thought


    when talking about head transplanting and bill gates, "microsoft exchange" gets a new meaning.

    microsoft (R) head exchange (R)
    with microsoft (R) body explorer (R)

    "what do you want to transplant today?" (R)
    version 9.00, first release (but who cares).

    you plug in the ms-phtu (microsoft (R) portable head transplanting unit) in an usb-slot and the thing is detected automatically. as a multimedia device. the default language is arabian, every single dll is automagically overwritten, but who cares. after half an hour of dumb clicking-around, everything is set up. hopefully.
    you have put your new headless body into the chair next to you.
    you fire up the virtual transplantation engine with a brave doubleclick.


    head transplanting initiated.
    please wait...


    [a window pops up showing two headless bodies sitting in chairs with a head floating from one to the other in an endless loop]

    and then, in the middle of the transplantation:


    ------- 0E ---------
    general head-protection fault
    error in trnsplnt.vxd at 00F0AD:00BEAF
    [meaningless hexdump follows]

    hope you made a backup copy of your head before it crashed!!!


    on a unix machine, your head would have been dumped :)) ... and an fallback process would have installed an emergency head on each body.

    AND...there would be a message:

    please run the transplantation manually.

  • You're forgetting Bill Gates and ass are in the same species, so it's already possible.
  • Ummm...that would be Moses, not a bunch of small plants (mosses). :)
  • You'd have other problems. First, as I understand it, it may not be possible at all to reconnect spinal nerves; I think several of them are quite long, on the order of inches. You'd have to vastly accelerate the growth of nerves to make it work. Nanotech would do it, but if you have nanotech, you'd have better options than transplants anyway.

    Let's assume you have a drug that lets the new brain and the spine connect up. The problem is, the subject will need lots of therapy to essentially rewire things. One thing might actually help - many learned reflexes are actually stored in the spine.

    A friend of mine suffered a back injury and lost the ability to run. He could stand, sit, walk, amble, mosey, shuffle, etc. But he couldn't run - the nerves that handled the "running algorithm" had been damaged. He had to relearn running from scratch, in his late teens.

    If the nerves could be reattached, and the new brain and spine could learn to agree on signaling (a big if), then less therapy might be needed than one would expect. Still, the subject would probably walk, sit, run, etc. remarkably like the "old" person did.

    It'd be interesting to see what other reflexes might transfer across; I have this image of Bill Gate's head on an "exotic dancer's" body. It's not a good image.

  • People who shoot themselves in the heads will provide the bodies.

    We'll probably see a bunch of people encouraging shutting down suicide hotlines. Promoters of these services will petition handgun manufacturers to advertise to the suicidal. Maybe we'll even see companies that have "suicide services" (i.e., assisted suicides)... all to harvest the bodies for the UKP800,000 operations...

  • > a lobotomized clone (slashdot buzzword #2)

    slashdot flame #3398427, surely?

    --
    This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
  • And then they say: "woops i have created a monster" i was not the monster it was dr. frankenstein who tried to live forever
  • And the nice thing is that the paper goes to bed before the U.S. does -- tomorrow's paper shows up at about 9pm Eastern time.
  • And I've actually seen footage where they did a full head transplant on a poor chimp, kinda like the one on that damned tv show Friends. It was research footage from one of those weird University projects, like the one where the professor was in it just for the funding. Anyhow, in the end, the head transplant was very possible, with the problem that the technology to reattach spinal nerves really isn't up to par... ie, after such surgery, you're paralysed from the neck down.
  • There's an article? I thought the point of slashdot was a contest to see who can type "FIRST POST!!!" the fastest...
    --------------------------

  • Well, replacing the brain is dificult because you can't replace the nerves that connect it to the eyes and ears once removed. But, the head transplant requires that we gain this technology (since the spine has to be reconnected - as the article mentions), so the step might actually not be that big.

    That said, I'm not sure I agree with the person who claimed to be fine with a 500 year old woman looking like a 25 year old ("Well, I tell you young man, orgasms sure aren't what they used to be!!")....


    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • Newscientist magazine recently carried an article about repairing damaged nerves. http://www.newscien tist.com/nsplus/insight/future/svendsen.html [newscientist.com] Common spinal injurys do a lot of damage but a clean knife cut could be fixable in the near future.

    Meph

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