Monkey Heads Transplanted At Last

elcosmico sends news that monkey brains are being transplanted. Well, sort of. We post some weird stuff in the science section, don't we?

Comments

I don't know which is worse...

[jd]

The stupidity of the "scientists" (who really deserve to lose any and all degrees, as a result), the stupidity of whoever stumped up the cash for this "research", or the lunacy of putting this on Slashdot.

What these guys have basically discovered is that glue sticks things together, really really well. Something most of the rest of us knew by the age of 5. (Though usually regretting it, afterwards. :)

Being able to stick two blood vessels together is so much a non-achievement that only Jeremy Beadle could compete.

Now, if these guys had managed to reconnect the entire nervous system (in the RIGHT order!), they would have achieved something that could credibly be called science.

IMHO, Universities should prohibit staff to play with paper and paste until they've got some serious work done.

Outside

[pubudu]

I'm afraid that I have to agree with the criticism of the procedure cited in the article. It seems that this guy's found a way to create the heads-in-jars found on Futurama, except without the ability to control giant robots.

The whole procedure actually reminds me a bit of the plot of David Bowie's Outside CD, where some crazy futuristic people perform bizarre medical operations as forms of artistic expression. Or that crazy German guy who embalms corpses in order to sculpt them (saw it on the Learning Channel).

Two notes.

[Alik]

1) The article says "and the animal survived for some time after the operation". "Some time" implies to me that it lasted about a week, maybe two, with major intensive care.

2) As the article points out, what they've really got is a head connected to the main neck vessels. All nervous system connections are kaput. What this means is that the brainstem (which has all the centers that regulate your vital organs) does not have a connection to such vital things as the phrenic nerve (which moves the diaphragm up and down). I doubt that this poor beast was able to breathe on its own. Also disconnected would be the vagus nerves, which go to pretty much every vital organ in some way. There's a classic quote in my anatomy textbook: "bilateral destruction of the vagus nerves is sooner or later incompatible with life". Being completely unable to regulate your body means you're basically fucked the next time something goes wrong. Your body could have any number of fatal diseases and you wouldn't feel a damn thing until it started affecting the brain (at which point you're usually terminal anyway).

Could you use this to be immortal? Sure, if you could solve the whole rejection problem and you don't mind having all the joyful life experience of the classical head-in-a-jar. I feel sorry for the monkey. The experiment proves basically nothing, isn't a technique which any rational surgeon or patient would accept as therapeutic, and pretty much just managed to cost a lot of money and cause a poor animal plenty of pain. I'm agreeing with the second gent they quoted --- nerve regeneration looks a lot better.

I'm just not sure...

[bcrowell]

...what area of my body I'd want the monkey head transplanted onto.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews

clearly i have completely lost my moral grounding

[jmarca]

because i laughed pretty hard at this article. Although an incredible waste of animal life, the sheer stupidity and audacity of the researchers made me laugh and laugh. It's like a Monty Python skit, except it is real. I can hear John Cleese proclaiming that the severed head of the monkey is merely resting its eyes at the moment, but that soon it will start climbing trees!

There is something this article is missing...

[Mossfoot]

That this is not new! A monkey brain transplant was conducted back in the 70's or 80's. But afterwards, no follow up research was done because of the "moral" implications. I saw footage from the opperation on The Learning Channel like two years ago!

What I'd like to know is why there is no mention of this previous opperation, and everyone is acting like this is a first? Maybe it's been done better, more efficently, or lasted longer ect... but it's not original!

However, I remember when I first saw this, I was disappointed that the research ended at that time. I'm not for cruelty to animals, but I am all for scientific progression... and the goal of a brain transplant has too many potential benefits (it's the only major organ that won't be rejected in another body) for it NOT to be fully explored.

Sometimes we block ourselves off from potentially beneficial avenues of discovery in the name of "morality" and "ethics", such as Stem-cell research or cloning, but often times that same morality or ethics are misguided, or misinformed, and through the ignorance of the masses we have a situation where our best and brightest are told not to "go there", not because of any rational reason, but because it make the public feel "icky" (for lack of a better word).