Woman's Voice Restored After Larynx Transplant

mvar writes "A woman in the US is able to speak for the first time in 11 years after a pioneering voicebox transplant. Brenda Jensen said the operation, which took place in California, was a miracle which had restored her life. Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words: 'Good morning, I want to go home.' It is the first time a larynx and windpipe have been transplanted at the same time (image) and only the second time a larynx has ever been transplanted. In October, surgeons at the University of California Davis Medical Center removed the larynx, thyroid gland and 6cm of the trachea from a donor body. In an 18-hour operation, this was transplanted into Ms. Jensen's throat and the team connected it to her blood supply and nerves. Thirteen days later, she was able to speak her first croaky words and is now able to talk easily for long periods of time."

Comments

Loving family.

[grub]

Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words: 'Good morning, I want to go home.'

Thirteen days and 5 minutes after the surgery her husband asked: 'She'll still be able to deep-throat, right Doc?'

Re:Loving family.

[Locke2005]

Actually, I pity her husband. This woman has 11 years worth of complaining she needs to catch up on!

Re:Loving family.

[Anonymous Coward]

Complaining? After 11 years with only her thoughts to occupy herself, this woman probably rivals the meekest nerd recluse in terms of outgoing personality / speech habits. Lots of time for introspection basically counteracts shallow thought and expression.

OTOH being mute that long might do things to the brain I can't even comprehend. Would be a fun topic to research :).

Re:Loving family.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess she got a control knob at her neck, so he can adjust the suction power like on vacum cleaners.

And so ends

[Anonymous Coward]

The happiest 11 years of one man's life.

Re:And so ends

[Anonymous Coward]

The happiest 11 years of one man's life.

No more deep throat?

Re:And so ends

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment makes me hate the universe a little.

This raises questions:

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

What does she sound like now, anyway? And what was her voice like before?

Re:This raises questions:

[I8TheWorm]

She sounds like James Earl Jones now. The good news is she also sounded like him before.

Re:This raises questions:

[TheLink]

Another question: will it work on animals?

I know we could have animals use computers to talk, but I'm curious what they'd do if they had a suitable larynx.

Re:This raises questions:

[Amorymeltzer]

You can hear her on the video in TFA. She sounds a bit like Yoda crossed with disguised Leia, but you can see how momentous it is for her. Really quite moving.

Re:This raises questions:

[Kilrah_il]

Talking needs both the suitable anatomy and the right "circuitry" (i.e. brain connection). While we may be able to implant a suitable larynx, the animal lacks the suitable brain connection for two reasons:
1) There was no evolutionary push to develop it, since there was no suitable anatomy (assuming the anatomy and neuroanatomy develop together).
2) There was no push for the brain circuits to develop in the animal's life, in the same way that a deaf person will not be able to hear properly, even with a hearing aid implantation (a cochlear implant), if he didn't hear anything in the first few years of his life.

Re:This raises questions:

[lmcgeoch]

I wish I sounded like James Earl Jones...of course I would swap "Luke I am your father." with "hi", "hello", "good-bye", "how are you doing?" and of course "I don't know" in everyday conversation.

Re:This raises questions:

[swanzilla]

They would thank you for all the fish.

Re:This raises questions:

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I was wondering the same thing. I would assume - once healing is complete - she will sound similar to the donor; not identical though, as she'll still have a unique method of using her vocal cords.

Re:This raises questions:

[Pwipwi]

The brain is an organ that is actually full of surprises.

We have seen people recover from severe nerve injury and know that neurons can be rearranged all the time.

Is there a definite proof that the brain can't adapt to something it wasn't explicitly programmed for ? Frankly, I would not be so surprised that it could.

Re:This raises questions:

[sourcerror]

You can teach gorillas sign language, but they will have a rather low vocabulary, and they don't use grammar rules. They also suck at maths.
For 3 year old child it takes 2 repetition to learn a new word, while for a gorilla it takes around 10. (I took a cognitive science course at uni.)

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)

Re:This raises questions:

[Kilrah_il]

I agree that the brain can do many amazing things, but there is a difference between reclaiming a lost function (like motor ability and sensation after a stroke) and learning a newability from scratch, an ability that the brain has not been exposed to in the critical period of infancy/early childhood.
The brain can learn new stuff, but usually as an extension of something it has already learned. Experiments with people who were born deaf show the poor results you get with a cochlear implant if it implanted at a late age, as compared to an early age.

Again, I may be wrong and the brain may surprise us (and it sure could be a cool thing to check), but given both the evolutionary and the development problems, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Well, maybe with dolphins...?

Re:This raises questions:

[demonlapin]

No. Most of your voice comes from your head - your sinuses, your nose, your mouth. The larynx can only really change the pitch at which you talk. Two examples:

1. The talking guitar (most famously, Peter Frampton's). The sound is produced by a guitar but modulated by his head and sent to a second microphone.

2. The little buzzers that produce a robot-like voice in people who have had a laryngectomy (Ned on South Park is probably the most famous fictional character I can think of with this, although that effect isn't actually created with one of the devices). The principle is that all you need is some constant tone that can be modulated by the head.

Re:This raises questions:

[khellendros1984]

This video has some video of her talking a little later. She still sounds worse than most smokers, but she's perfectly understandable, and the voice is identifiably female.

Re:This raises questions:

[TheLink]

I was thinking more of getting dogs to talk. Then again, their barking can already be annoying enough. So maybe some things are best left unsaid :).

Re:This raises questions:

[mavasplode]

You can teach gorillas sign language, but they will have a rather low vocabulary, and they don't use grammar rules.

Don't use grammar rules? "Using a semicolon isn't hard; I once saw a party gorilla do it." - The Oatmeal

Re:This raises questions:

[Darinbob]

Obligatory: http://d1syadvoyajtpr.cloudfront.net/534fa0b9aacaf866a8eb6c6f51fa1388_500.jpg

Re:This raises questions:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very short-sighted answer. Go google for "Victor the talking Budgie" - you'll be astonished, if not outraged.

Did you know that "Budgerigar" is Aborigine for "Good to eat" - how can you eat a disputably "sentient" being?

Re:This raises questions:

[sourcerror]

Then I recommend the novel City by Clifford Simak.

"The novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales the pastoral and pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man. Each tale is preceded by doggish notes and learned discussion.

An editor's preface notes that after each telling of the legend the pups ask many questions:

        "What is Man?" they'll ask.
        Or perhaps: "What is a city?"
        Or: "What is a war?
        There is no positive answer to any of these questions."
"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel)

Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

They can replace Adam's apples now? Now how are we gonna tell the real females from the trannies?

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

the word "tr*****s" is derogatory, and assuming that there's a need to separate them is parochial

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes HILARIOUS! oh those funny trannies.

seriously people, this is 2011. yes, some people are transgendered, and guess what... they are "real" (insert sex here). and some of the m2f sound perfectly fine. get over your stereotypes dude.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can replace Adam's apples now? Now how are we gonna tell the real females from the trannies?

I'm reminded of a particular scene in Crocadile Dundee where he feels up a "woman" that someone told him was really a man. That method should still work.

Re:Oh noes!

[the linux geek]

"Real females" vs "trannies." How tactful.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't listen to the parent... you use the "grope" technique made popular by Dundee.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Handy-dandy XY cromossome tests I guess

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

So is "cracker" or "whitey" or "nerd" or "douche" and yet nobody gets their dick all bent out of shape for those things. Maybe these trannies just need to grow a pair of balls.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, probably a wrong word, but still some people want to now the genetic sex of someone without being deceived, so the question is valid

Re:Oh noes!

[RightSaidFred99]

Good God, looking at the replies above it seems we have a full on squad of PC police monitoring SlashDot posts for anything that doesn't Honor Our Differences.

Re:Oh noes!

[the linux geek]

So you'd be fine with it if he had said "nigger," "raghead," or "kike"?

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can replace Adam's apples now? Now how are we gonna tell the real females from the trannies?

If the girls you have been sleeping with have an adams apple, then you have been sleeping with, as you put it, 'trannies'. ;) Usually they take out the adams apple, not put it in.

Re:Oh noes!

[Reverse Engineering]

Wondering the same thing. Do they grow these parts or do people sell them? Crazy world.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

It's just like my views on homosexuals: unless you are planning on dating them, their sexual preference is irrelevant. If I'm planning on sleeping with someone, I'd argue that their genetically assigned gender IS important, and there IS a real need to separate XX from XY. I'm also surprised that nobody has yet used the obvious retort, "Well, their dick is usually a dead giveaway!" "Tranny" can be short for transvestite as well as transexual.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Not the OP)

If the joke was clever, then yep, I'd be ok with it. I bet the OP you responded to would be ok with it, too. I'm Native American, and I don't get pissy any time someone uses the terms redskin, injun, or squaw. It's even ok if you call me -- gasp! -- an INDIAN. Having everyone to try avoid "bad words" for the sake of political correctess is fucking stupid.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was a funny joke, I wouldn't care. Saying over the top offensive things is hilarious, see every funny person in the world as a reference. Then realize that as somebody who isn't attracted to men or thinks its morally wrong to have sex with men might really want to be able to tell the difference between a biological male, and somebody who thought "you know, maybe I'd like to try out life with no penis." Sure, there may be a vast portion of transgendered who put a lot of thought in to it and psychological evaluations, etc. but I'm also sure there are the type of people with poor analytical skills, poor judgment skills, and poor self image that go that way to make things easier, not because its what they are.

Maybe I'm black at heart, can I go around in black face?

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

without getting into a full-on debate -- i can appreciate what you're saying -- but transgendered females are no more deceiving people than others who cannot give birth, have chromosonal defects, or other variations that humans have. there is a time and place to have this discussion with your significant other, but it's not transgendered people's duty to wear this information on their sleeve.

there are some interesting philisophical debates on this if you ever get bored.

Re:Oh noes!

[realityimpaired]

1. Somebody who's a male-to-female transsexual is female. Period. Regardless of what they look like. Similarly, a female-to-male transsexual is male.
2. Most of the FtM transsexuals that I know never had a very pronounced adam's apple to begin with.
3. Some genetic females have an adam's apple. In fact, I know some genetic females with larger adam's apples than some of the transsexual females I know.
4. Surgery to get rid of the Adam's Apple has been around for years. Tracheal Shave surgery is done on an outpatient basis.

And finally, while you're trying to be funny, it's worth pointing out that for most transsexuals I know, using the word "tranny" is akin to using a word like "nigger" to a black person. It's extremely offensive, and hurtful. You'd do well to not use it.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'd be fine with it if he had said "nigger," "raghead," or "kike"?

How are any of those shortened versions for proper, scientific terms which accurately describe said person?

Or are you implying that tranny != transsexual? Or are you implying people who modify their gender identity from their chromosomal base shouldn't be refered to as transsexuals?

Or would you be fine with the GP just referring to "real women" as "real XX chromosome women"?

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Generally, yes. However, a person up in Nazi or Klan regalia may be interpreted by some people as a credible threat of violence. Likewise, since "the n-word" was commonly used by Klansmen to address the people they were lynching, it may be interpreted by some people as a threat of violence. (Admittedly, that's a stretch.) While I firmly believe people have a right to offensive speech, I also believe they do not have a right to threatening speech. It is only due to the possibility for interpretation as a threat that the n-word should not be used by anyone in conversation.

As far as "squaw", wasn't that a word used by the American natives themselves? I never considered it particularly degrading, more like the equivalent of referring to our wives/girlfriends as "the old lady".

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chromosomes aren't relevant unless the plan is to have kids ... and even then is it common to ask your partner if she's capable of bearing children before having sex?

Re:Oh noes!

[h4rr4r]

I would suggest you look into androgen insensitivity syndrome before you think about this too much further. Short of a lab test telling XX from XY is not as simple as you are likely to think.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

If they word "tranny" offensive, they should probably avoid their local transmission repair shop.

Re:Oh noes!

[RightSaidFred99]

Genuine question - what part of your ego development do you think got stunted such that you feel a need to show the world (and probably yourself) what a forward-thinking, non-biased human being you are?

I don't give a shit about race or sexual orientation either way, and I don't care about being labeled homophobic, racist, or any other *ist you care to mention. Your estimation of my quality as a human being means less than shit to me.

When people apply violence for any reason, then I care. Mel Gibson ranting racist nonsense? I don't give a shit - if he made a good movie I'd see it.

Re:Oh noes!

[realityimpaired]

That's what the Real Life Experience is for. In order to qualify for surgery, according to the standards of care set forth by WPATH, a transsexual needs to live as their perceived sex for at least a year.

Considering the number who de-transition before that year is up, you're not wrong about there being some people who leap on it as a possible out when it isn't the real problem, but there still are a very large number of people for whom it works, and those people really are their perceived gender, regardless of genetics.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Black people call each other "nigga" too, but it's still off limits for anyone who isn't black.

If that explanation isn't good enough for you, then read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squaw#Controversy

It's considered derogatory by a lot of people. I remember in high school hearing a group of guys talk about how they would "love to fuck that little squaw bitch in history class." Imagine them instead saying "I'd love to fuck that little Asian bitch in history." Asian isn't a derogatory term in and of itself, but it's sure as hell meant to be one in that scenario. Same with squaw.

Of course, there are also a lot of people that just plain don't give a shit. As mentioned, I fall into that second category.

Re:Oh noes!

[wolfsdaughter]

context baby, context

- apparently some people understand what that is, but apparently you don't

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

I am fully aware that there exists a small number of people that are not easily classified as one gender or the other. In fact, that is one of my arguments against California's Proposition 8: according to a law defining marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman, are these people denied their right to marry anyone? I'd love to see a true hermaphrodite or somebody with XXY chromasomes file suite.

In parting, let me say that this was an (admittedly pathetic) attempt at a joke which has been completely ruined by over-analysis.

Re:Oh noes!

[h4rr4r]

What about people whose biological sex does not match their chromosomes?

Androgen insensitivity is the most common of these syndromes, but there are others.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Murdering someone is already illegal. Threatening to murder someone doesn't need to be made illegal. If anything, being told that one is going to be murdered is useful in that one knows who to watch out for. Either the threat is real or it isn't, tautologically. At best, all such laws would only ensure that any murders would be committed without warning. At worst, they would have chilling effects on free speech which is nothing but hot air.

Re:Oh noes!

[RightSaidFred99]

I didn't say anything of that nature, actually. But OK I'm a *ist. Oh the mental anguish I will face now that I've acknowledged it!

Re:Oh noes!

[mcgrew]

Bone structure. The female skeleton is quite unlike the male skeleton, and no amount of surgery will hide it.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Thank you for the wiki reference. I learned 2 things today. (The other thing was that you should never google the word "tranny", especially at work.)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, making a joke about black people makes you a racist. Good god, are you really that retarded?

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in the sterile minority and in a dating environment it is your responsibility to inform your potential partner as early as it is practical to do so.
Anything less is clearly misrepresentation.

As an XY male who, through no choice of his own, is sterile, I deem it very important to relay this fact before an emotional attachment develops, and if asked, I will explain the relevant details.

Dating is a marketplace, and if you are representing yourself as a fertile member of your apparent gender when you are not, then you are committing fraud just as much as a guy in a super-market changing the expiration date on the milk.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

It should be obvious just from your nickname (RightSaidFred99) that you really don't give a shit what other people think about you!

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what a "context baby" is either. Please explain.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you assuming that everyone is dating in order to breed? I know people, who are most likely fertile, but never want to have kids

Re:Oh noes!

[moeluv]

No it doesn't mean anything like "old lady" it would in fact be like calling them whore. Which is essentially what squaw means.

Re:Oh noes!

[h4rr4r]

They would?

It is already illegal to threaten someone's life.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

And somebody who has their mouth surgically replaced by a beak, and feathers installed on their arms is a bird. Period. Or not. Sex change operations go part of the way, but are a cosmetic operation when you get down to it. Legally, it results in a changed sex, but then, legally, Pi could be 3 too.

Re:Oh noes!

[realityimpaired]

Considering that my girlfriend is a lesbian, my ability to breed with her is a non-issue... but no, I can't get her pregnant. If you're wondering, she can't get me pregnant, either. :)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

For now.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

No, even the threat of violence can be used to deprive people of their rights, e.g. "Don't show up at the polling station or I'll kill you." Threat is also a key element of extortion, which is unlawful. Granted, determining intent for some utterances is fraught with peril.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

XXY chromosomes do not make you an hermaphrodite (despite the PC crowd nowadays wanting to refer to XXY-people as 'intersex').

Oversimplifying a lot, placental mammals have their male and female characteristics defined in various chromosomes, with the default value assigned to female. The Y chromosome overrides the default.

XXXXXXXXXXXY would still be male, if probably infertile. (Supposing they would survive. Having extra copies of a chromosome can lead to some nasty defects.)

This applies for placental mammals and birds. True hermaphrodites are statistically impossible in this system. Ambiguous gender is not, but generally results from things other than chromosome defects, such as unusual hormone combinations or insensitivity to specific sex hormones.

I agree that the law is somewhat bad for these people, though, I was just being pedantic.

What concerns me far more than this little law is that parents invariably send babies with ambiguous genitalia for sex change operations, which can screw them up quite badly*. Doctors encourage this, and the kid has to live with the consequences.

* It makes you look essentially normal, but usually results in a complete inability to feel sexual pleasure. Also, the eventual development of the child's body (bone structure, etc.) doesn't always match the sex change, even with hormone therapy.

(P.S. I am not a doctor, so do your own research if you ever need to make important decisions regarding the above.)

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Right, and distinguishing between "real blondes" and those that dye their hair is derogatory too...

Re:Oh noes!

[popeye44]

The first page of Google responses for Tranny don't have a fucking thing to do with transmissions. I'd say if the shoe fits the transsexuals can wear it. Tranny it is.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

I agree with you that arbitrarily "assigning gender" by lopping off the penis shortly after birth without any consideration to how the person will gender identify later in life is a tragedy, but I only know about this from review of a book that was published a few years ago.

My point was that the legal system is not set up to arbitrate gender, and as such we shouldn't pass laws that require the legal system to decide whether someone is male or female. The only fair way to handle these corner cases is to not have a "100% male" or "100% female" requirement in _any_ law. Justice should be blind to gender. (Granted, this results in women who sleep with underage boys being treated on principle the same as men who seduce underage girls.)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

They can replace Adam's apples now? Now how are we gonna tell the real females from the trannies?

You know, that problem isn't very high on my list.

Re:Oh noes!

[Velex]

Bone structure. The female skeleton is quite unlike the male skeleton, and no amount of surgery will hide it.

I was going to moderate this thread to hell and back, but decided to reply instead since you have a valid point. Please pardon my rant since it's not a direct reply to you, but more a commentary on this thread as a whole.

I'm lucky. Despite my male birth, I have a relatively easy time passing and I even get guys flirting with me. Not all trans women are as lucky as I am in that department.

This issue is why it is critical that transgendered children are identified and diagnosed before puberty. Transsexualism might be a joke to some men who are insecure and a threat to some women who are insecure (or vise-versa), but it is a very real aspect of the human condition and is not going away, ever.

Well, I should correct myself. If transgendered children were diagnosed before puberty, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a trans woman and a "real woman," and man-in-a-dress transsexuality as we know it today would cease to exist. There would be no need for expensive cosmetic surgery.

(Yes, it is cosmetic, but if there were something about you that made people constantly and vehemently [and sometimes violently] insist that you aren't the gender you are, you'd want to do something about it.)

And no, the argument that they aren't women because they can't have children doesn't fly, unless you want to explain to several thousand "real" women that they need to sign up for selective service and start using the men's room because they can't have children either.

Biology is messy. Can't we just finally conclude in this day and age where women can vote, have careers, and own property that gender is a silly anachronism? Sure, the vast majority of people are either men or women, even the homosexual ones, but not everyone is strictly one or the other, and we can split hairs about what exactly a man or woman is and discuss androgen-insensitive women and kleinfelter's syndrome to hell and back, but I think it's easier just to say biology is messy and get on with life.

*sigh* Anyway, I know I am asking too much. Thanks for you time.

Re:Oh noes!

[sjames]

I would like the courts getting bogged down with deciding if the law Literally means one XY person and one XX person or will any combination adding up to at least 3 X and 1 Y be OK? How about one XXXX woman marrying two XY men? If a transsexual XX identifies as a gay male, can he marry an XY man?

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

When a daddy context and a mommy context really love each other they hold each other in a special way. And that makes a context baby.

Re:Oh noes!

[masterwit]

Ah makes me think of a certain song:

She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice
She said Lola, L-O-L-A, Lola, L-L-Lola
-KINKS

I guess they could replace the voice too!

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

I didn't say that XXY and hermaphrodite were the same thing (I used the word "or".) What I said was that either could be legally construed as not meeting either the "1 man" or "1 woman" criteria, for different reasons.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Difficult to say.

Marriage is a social convention that exists for specific reasons (mainly kids), so saying that it must be gender-neutral is not a standpoint that I am at all willing to take.

"1 man and 1 woman" would handle ambiguous cases perfectly well if gender determination were done on the basis of "close enough for me".

You may differ, of course.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

An XXXX woman would not be legally allowed to marry to XY men, the law defines marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman, not between any number of men and women in a 1:1 ratio. If you are using X/Y chromasomes as the determining factor, than as I read the law nobody with one or more extra X or Y chromasomes would be legally allowed to marry under a "1 man and 1 woman" definition of marriage.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, even the threat of violence can be used to deprive people of their rights, e.g. "Don't show up at the polling station or I'll kill you."

So, are you saying that people then can't physically show up? If that's not what you're saying then how is anything being deprived? They can just show up, end of story. Either the threat is real or it isn't. If the threat is real then having a warning is better than not having a warning. If the threat isn't real then it's irrelevant.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Same sex couples can and do have kids which should as a basic human right be entitled to all the same benefits and protection as the children of mixed-sex couples. This includes the knowledge that their parents are "married" in the same sense as everyone else's parents, and thus more likely to remain together than a couple "living in sin."

The religious right, although well intentioned, are wrong simply because they are misled by their overly simplistic binary (either/or) view of the world.

Re:Oh noes!

[Skidborg]

I will bother to be offended by the term when people get around to outlawing "b*****d" because it is derogatory to persons of undetermined ancestry.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

bigoted cowards like you make me sad

Re:Oh noes!

[realityimpaired]

It's worth pointing out that voice is, by far, the most important factor to your ability to pass, though. I know some transwomen who look absolutely gorgeous, but as soon as they open their mouth the illusion is broken. Similarly, I know some transwomen who are 6' tall, 200lbs of muscle, and who have absolutely no problem passing at all, even without having had any surgeries.

You're right about skeletal structure, and about the damages done by testosterone during puberty, but a person's body language and their voice can overcome that. :) Also, don't overlook the changes that happen to a person's gait as their connective tissues change with the increased estrogen in their body... ligaments and tendons become more elastic, and it does affect a person's gait and posture. :)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gender is determined by the presence or absence of (a) Y-chromosome(s), having extra chromosomes introduces no significant ambiguity.

I cannot see how you would have difficulty convincing a court of this fact; any biologist could probably testify it for you.

(Sorry for repeating myself, I mentioned this in our discussion below. I just seriously don't understand why you insist that it would create problems in a court. Please explain?)

Re:Oh noes!

[mcgrew]

Cheer up, it's a whole lot better than it used to be. Seventy years ago if you'd been found out you'd have been murdered. And it's getting better all the time.

The "not a woman because you can't have children" is a stupid argument. Does that mean a woman who's had a hysterectomy is no longer a woman?

You mention that you get guys flirting with you, but I'm 100% male inside and out (body and brain), yet gays still hit on me.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Agreed, both sexuality and gender should be considered as a continuum, not as a binary either/or construction. Just like left and right handedness, most people tend to cluster towards one side, but there are still people at all points in the continuum.

In an ideal world, yes, all people would be allowed to choose their gender identity for themselves before puberty. I tried to raise my daughter in a unisex manner, but discovered that it is impossible -- everyone will force expectations on children based on their perception of the child's gender. I am happy for you that your gender adjustment turned out so well, and I'll reiterate what I said earlier -- someone else's sexuality and/or gender should be irrelevant to you, _unless_ you plan on dating them!

P.S. Please ignore the haters. All people are deserving of happiness, and nobody should be ashamed to be who they really are.

Re:Oh noes!

[salmacis]

I started transitioning when I was 28, and now I'm 40 year old, 6' tall, 155 lb, trans woman with medium bone structure - definitely not "petite", and no plastic surgery (other than genital reassignment) and I get hit on by straight guys (and gay women) fairly often (although admittedly, not as much by guys as I did a few years ago).

Anyway - she probably meant that she was getting hit on by straight men, not gay men.

Re:Oh noes!

[Velex]

That's odd, I Googled "transsexual woman" and got something completely different. I think I'll wear that shoe instead.

Pro tip: women born transsexual usually have two options: 1.) Gender transition. 2.) Suicide. As a culture we need to get over this idea that someone who has the wrong physical sex for their gender goes through gender transition to satisfy some sexual thrill.

It's wrong, completely wrong. There's a mountain of evidence that says that it's just simply factually incorrect. You might as well link me to the Flat Earth Society as "proof" that the world is flat. It's a superstition, nothing more, and a rotten one as it causes people to commit suicide and breaks apart families.

Now, that being said, transsexual women are sexual beings. Most people (not all) are. Yes, transsexual women have sex, but most have sex like a normal woman would, with their boyfriend (or girlfriend) in bed with the door closed and curtains shut (I'm assuming, but that's how I do it personally, ymmv, etc). However, some people who are sexual like to produce pornography.

Here's the other trick. Because medical insurance won't cover any of my costs related to gender transition (some plans do, and the AMA has encouraged health insurance providers to cover at least the sex change surgery itself and meds iirc), I've considered whether I'd want to be one of the people that gets returned when searching Google for "tranny." I'm not sure I'm desperate enough yet to even look into it, but I imagine some of those girls are up there for the sole reason that they're getting paid and gender transition is EXPENSIVE.

Guess what? I'd guarantee you that most of those girls you see when you Google "tranny" were once 7-year old boys who wished they'd just been born female. (Does anyone have research on transsexual women who participate in pornography and what their reasons are? I assume most are doing it for the same reason cisgendered women do it, but I'm curious if any/how many transsexual women do it simply because of anti-trans discrimination [thus perpetuating this self-fulfilling prophecy that a transsexual woman can only be a sex worker, but I digress].)

However, a 7-year old boy who wants to kill himself because he can't be a girl is NOT a sexual being. It's time to wake up and realize that transgender feelings aren't a fetish that gets turned on at the age of 12! Yes, children have transgender feelings. Why don't you try asking a "tranny" sometime and getting your head out of your ass and listening? Most transsexual women have known that something was wrong and have wanted to be girls since they were 7, many younger than that.

If you're going to tell me that a 7-year old boy who wants to be a girl is exhibiting a sexual fetish, you need some serious help. If it's ok with you that the same person, years later, kills themselves because of the things people like you spout off, you are a sick individual.

Oh, by the way, don't forget about the gentlemen. Apparently, "women" get sex changes, too, and then they live as men, so it's not even something unique to perverted "men," as I imagine trans women are in your own little world.

Cheers

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

I will stipulate to your contention that having any Y chromasomes makes one male for scientific purposes. You have a rather naive faith that legal arguments are always scientifically based. If this were true, we wouldn't be arguing in courts about teaching creationism in schools! What I said was that if the legal eagles decided to use chromasomes as a criteria, it might pose a problem. I never said that they should or would use that criteria. In fact, what I said is trying to arbitrate gender causes problems for the legal system that they are not set up to handle.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm a troll i do not care for your opinion.

Re:Oh noes!

[Velex]

This may shock and amaze you, but in most cases from what I understand, this surgery would not be needed for a male-to-female transsexual to sound female. A masculinized voicebox is, in general, capable of producing a female-sounding voice with practice.

(Anyway, when I use my male voice while dressed as a male, it astounds me that in spite of how obvious my birth sex ought to be, some people still think I'm female like that! Just imagine how easy it'll be for me to "trick" one of you boys once I finally get my female voice figured out, lol.)

I hope this information doesn't turn you into a nervous wreck the next time you meet a cute girl!

Cheers

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrelevant for you, do not put your personal preferences as the standard. People must respect transgendered persons and treat them with respect, but still that does not means everyone must like to date one

Re:Oh noes!

[wolfsdaughter]

I don't think it's even the Y chromosome, it's the the SRY gene (which is _usually_ located on the Y Chromosome) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY

but - there are XX males. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Marriage" and "living in sin" are fundamentally the same thing*.

"Marriage" laws exist as a formal way of saying that this particular relationship is conducted more or less according to the conventions of the religious majority of the country.

Same-sex relationships are a bold and unambiguous way of going against such conventions, why would those couples care if people say they're "living in sin"?**

* There's even a minister in a local church who says it's exactly the same. Someone with a brain, for a change. :)
** I know there are people who say homosexuality is compatible with the bible, but, honestly, they haven't read it. You can believe whatever you will, but I don't like or trust people who call something the One True Way and then don't follow it.

Slashdot is making it difficult for me to hold a conversation with this delay between posts. (Don't know if it's better with an account, but I value my privacy.) So I'll post this in one place.

Regarding "true hermaphrodite or somebody with XXY":

1. Humans can not be true hermaphrodites.
2. XXY is unambiguously male.

You sound interested in a topic of which I have some small amount of knowledge, and I enjoy intelligent conversation. It was not meant as an attack, I apologise if you read it that way. That is why I said "I am being pedantic".

I just wanted to point out that the examples you used are very different from "person of ambiguous gender"(/"intersex"/"pseudo-hermaphrodite"/euphemism of the day).

Regarding the legal determination of gender:

Perhaps I underestimate the stupidity of your crazy conservatives because I don't live there.

I think you have far, far bigger problems than mariage law if your judges think they know more about science than your scientists, but I'll grant you this point.

Re:Oh noes!

[salmacis]

[sarcasm]Yea, and people should disclose if they have a black, jewish or etc. ancestor, because that's a problem too [/sarcasm]...

Re:Oh noes!

[wolfsdaughter]

http://www.voicedoctor.net/surgery/fem_lar.html

http://www.voicedoctor.net/media/cases/pitch/FemLarTH_75/FemLarTH_75.html

Re:Oh noes!

[drinkypoo]

"Real females" vs "trannies." How tactful.

How does tact enter into this?

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

Separated from the legal definition of Marriage, a marriage is simply a public declaration in front of witnesses by 2 people who pledge to stay together. (2 for simplicity's sake; even in polygamous marriages spouses are generally acquired one at a time.) Traditionally these witnesses were family and friends who would intervene to convince these 2 people to stay together should they show signs of breaking up, but these days you can pay just about anybody to be a "witness" for a quicky Nevada wedding.

The public declaration of the contract presumably makes it slightly more likely to withstand the test of time then the private "living together" contract that 2 people enter into, without benefit of witnesses or recording of the contract, when they decide to begin shacking up. As such, the marriage does provide a greater benefit in assuring the durability of the family. Those who are against same sex marriage should be regarded as also being anti-family and anti-children, as they want to foist their beliefs on others in a way that harms certain families and children.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. Finding humor in stereotypes does not imply belief in or approval of said stereotypes.

Re:Oh noes!

[Velex]

Seventy years ago if you'd been found out you'd have been murdered. And it's getting better all the time.

Yes, and I'm thankful I only lost my family when I let them know. In hindsight, I'm lucky that's all that happened, but my family is a little militia-type "the end times are here" kooky anyway. It's not a big list, but here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_transgender_people

The flip side is that I'm always flabbergasted when I talk to a transsexual woman who has an ongoing relationship with a family that accepts her, and that seems to happen frequently.

I probably could patch things up with my family and may do it some day, but what I guess it comes down to is I had stubborn and somewhat loopy parents who had a stubborn and somewhat loopy child.

You mention that you get guys flirting with you, but I'm 100% male inside and out (body and brain), yet gays still hit on me.

That's probably 70% correct in my case since usually my voice gives me away (which supports your point that things are a lot better for trans folks these days than even 30 years ago, say), although every now and then someone will think I'm really female while I'm dressed as a male which is just plain odd. Without going into details, though, guys that I'm 100% sure are straight have flirted with and/or "ma'amed" me. And yes, I think there have been a few guys who have flirted with me who were gay or bi, too.

Re:Oh noes!

[demonlapin]

The difficult part is regaining the sound range of an immediately prepubescent boy. An eleven-year-old no longer has a "childish" sound to their voice except the range is a bit high. As I discovered to my great amusement at that age, there's a good reason they get adult women to voice the parts of boys in movies and TV. As long as the entire business could be conducted over the phone, I had no problem convincing people that I was an adult woman rather than a preteen boy.

Re:Oh noes!

[universegeek]

I dunno, Wikipedia said tranny was "sometimes slang and reclaimed" not just pejorative. Maybe he's a transvestite and he's taking tranny back!

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I understand where you're coming from. There is a misconception in your statement, one I can't really blame you for seeing only the traditions of your own area.

1. You want to allow same-sex couples to marry. To do this, you must necessarily disconnect marriage from the traditional Christian model currently prevalent in the USA.
2. At the same time, you accept as marriage only those relationships under the traditional Christian model currently prevalent in the USA.

Remember that every culture and legal tradition has its own concept of what it is to be married. In some societies, you didn't wed at all, but the woman living with you was still your wife. (Nothing required, just a definition. That's what the minister above also believes.) I don't know if it's still widely accepted that way in any part of the world, but common law seems to lean towards it in practice if not in name.

Islamic law has different ideas still. So does tribal law in Africa. (Different from one tribe to the next.) And I could go on listing examples all day.

Here in South Africa, you can marry under tribal law, no same-sex couples, polygamy allowed. You can marry under Western law, no same-sex couples, no polygamy . You can marry under Western law, any sex, no polygamy. You can marry under Islamic law, no same-sex couples, up to four wives. You can, in fact, marry under just about any system and the courts are expected to live with it.

Putting the law aside, you don't actually need a minister, priest, pastor, imam, magistrate or judge to agree on a contract nor to publicly state "it's serious". You can do that on your own.

People need some way of getting stability in their lives, but there is more than one way to skin a cat.

There is absolutely no basis to believe that family will only support you if you follow a certain model. (Provided they like the model you follow.)

Regarding your last paragraph, there's a bit of correlation and causation at work:

1. Couples usually don't want to enter a marriage contract when the writing is already on the wall.
2. Furthermore, the ratio marriage/cohabitation differs by generation. It used to be a great shame to divorce, so this skews the statistics in favour of marriage being more lasting.

I hate to say this, but you probably bought the propaganda from those crazy American churches you hate so much. ("See! Married couples last longer! Don't live in sin! Or he'll leave you!" is what it ultimately boils down to.)

Yes, statistics is my field. No, I haven't checked their numbers. I don't need to because I can smell biased statistics from a mile away.

What I am saying is that there is no need to force those who marry under a specific tradition to change the rules of their tradition.

Well, I bet you're tired of me by now. ;)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be women, but I take female to be a sex word, not a gender word. They are not, in that sense, female. They are not genetically female. They are not reproductionally female. Their brain, bone, and muscular structures are most likely not female.

Re:Oh noes!

[Locke2005]

No, I don't want to foist my definition of marriage on other people. When it comes to families, I believe the more inclusive the definition of "family", the better. However, as I get older and become more conservative, I find myself agreeing with some of the (American) religious rights postulates, e.g. that children do better with 2 parents than with one, and that marriage benefits the children of said marriage. However, if one follows these arguments to their logical conclusion, one should right conclude that same sex couple should be allowed to marry for the benefit of their children, by the religious rights own argument! This logic is directed at and in response to the culture war currently occurring in the US with California's Proposition 8 as one of the main focal points. It is not expected or intended to be universal or apply to all cultures, except to point out that the concept of marriage is found in virtually every culture probably because it provides real benefits towards the survival of those cultures. Since homosexuals can and do have children and nobody can demonstrate any tangible harm resulting from same-sex marriage, I believe all cultures may benefit by not distinguishing between mixed-sex and same sex marriage.

Re:Oh noes!

[geekoid]

Since the transvestites I know call themselves trannies, I don't see the comparison.

And they aren't real females.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well what if one wanted to have children? I imagine it is more than just "parochial"

Re:Oh noes!

[realityimpaired]

(Does anyone have research on transsexual women who participate in pornography and what their reasons are? I assume most are doing it for the same reason cisgendered women do it, but I'm curious if any/how many transsexual women do it simply because of anti-trans discrimination [thus perpetuating this self-fulfilling prophecy that a transsexual woman can only be a sex worker, but I digress].)

I don't, but if you like, I can ask my therapist... she teaches sexology and is a member of both CPATH and WPATH, and if she doesn't have the numbers herself, she'd know who does have the numbers. (assuming that study has actually been done).

I would imagine that the numbers are much higher than the general population, though, for exactly the reasons you suggest. Things are a little better in other parts of the world, though... in the province of Quebec, for example, there's 100% coverage for both the hormones and the surgery. (though they don't give you a choice in surgeon, it's Brossard or Brossard)... Ontario has limited coverage: nothing for the hormones, but there's a limited number of surgeries that get covered per year. I have not looked into whether they'll give you a choice in surgeon, but I imagine they would restrict you to Brossard for the same reasons Quebec does: he's the only one in Canada that's certified to do it. (though if I can convince them to pay for Bowers, then I won't have to fall back on plan B: paying for it myself. ;))

Of course, Canada is better anyway... we've had gays serving openly in the military for 21 years now, and both homosexuality and transgender identity have been read into the constitution as protected from discrimination... :)

Re:Oh noes!

[roman_mir]

give the guy a break, he has been searching for a while, trannies are not easy to come by...

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, tranny is short for transvestite, not transsexual.

Re:Oh noes!

[EEGeek]

By the penis is his pants...

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trannies are not real females.

Re:Oh noes!

[marcello_dl]

WTF? They need to be especially recognized as the women who resolved the issue of penis envy, instead.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you intentionally conflating transvestites and transsexuals, or are you just unaware of the difference?

Or, put more bluntly (and moderators, mod me down if you think this is flamebait): are you trolling, or are you just stupid?

Sheesh.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's exactly what happened! The OP of this thread made a joke, and some idiot flipped out because he can't deal with the fact that trannies aren't real females, and took it personally.

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you try to impose your beliefs on others?

Somebody who's a male-to-female transsexual is female. Period

My belief is: a "transsexual operation" does not change your genes. Sex is determined by genes, so transsexuals do not actually change sex, they only change their appearance.

Feel free to think differently, just don't try proselytism on us, Period ;)

Re:Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry about the late reply, my cpu packed up.)

If a man marries, say, 2 women in Egypt and travels to the USA, they are committing a crime by simply existing. They, too, can have children. Same thing, different story, eh?

Your problem is not the definition of legal marriage. Your problem is that it is a crime to be married in a way that differs from legal marriage.

You don't need to force people to change their practices. You need the opposite: the state should stop insisting that there be only one practice.

Anyway, if you don't agree then it's no hard feelings.

Re:Oh noes!

[John Meacham]

Obligatory Simpsons Quote:

Homer to Apu: "Morning, Apu. Still in hot water with the squaw?"

wrong on multiple levels...
 

so her voice is different now?

[Stregano]

does that mean the possibility of me getting surgery to change my voice to sound like Bruce Willis?

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Locke2005]

Sure, but first you'd have to kill Bruce Willis and steal his larynx...

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Abstrackt]

That'll be difficult. I hear he dies hard.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Willis? That's the best you can come up with? I'd rather go for Vin Diesel's voice, even though it would sound funny on a 5'7" small-framed person like me

Re:so her voice is different now?

[ArcherB]

That'll be difficult. I hear he dies hard.

That will just make it difficult to close the casket.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Samantha Wright]

Lung capacity plays a pretty big role in determining the pitch of one's comfortable speaking range. If we were indeed to give you Vin Diesel's larynx, it would come out sounding higher-pitched.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Stregano]

But it would be really funny. I would honestly pay for that surgery

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Labcoat Samurai]

I'm curious. How does that work, exactly?

So does that mean lung cancer victims who've had parts of their lungs removed have higher pitched voices? Also, it doesn't seem to properly explain voice changes in puberty, which are enormous in males, and comparably very small in females. And then of course we have singers. Do tenors have lower lung capacity than, say, baritones? I'm not very familiar with singing techniques, but the big name soloists all seem to have really great lung capacity. On the other hand, you did refer to "comfortable speaking range"

But despite all that skepticism, I wouldn't want to give the impression of being argumentative... it just seems a remarkable statement to make, and one I'd be interested in hearing explained.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[drinkypoo]

It's even harder than you think, he is Unbreakable.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[chichilalescu]

I love the meta joke of you being modded informative. By the way, are you allowed to make Chuck Norris jokes using Bruce Willis?

Re:so her voice is different now?

[Samantha Wright]

Whoops—looks like I'm totally wrong. If you want to know more, this Wikipedia article looks like the most topical.

Re:so her voice is different now?

[mavasplode]

It would probably take an Armageddon.

Donor body?!?!

[martas]

So that poor donor can't talk anymore?? SO cruel! How can this be legal???

Re:Donor body?!?!

[Trevorm7]

If the donor body was able to talk, we would have a much bigger problem to worry about...

Re:Donor body?!?!

[Cwix]

It probably came from a cadaver.

Why would you assume it came from a living person? Do heart transplants come from a living person? Now that person cant pump blood anymore.. SO cruel !!1!

Re:Donor body?!?!

[martas]

Whoosh, or are you just reciprocating with a joke?

Re:Donor body?!?!

[Kilrah_il]

There are some people where it should be legal to stop them from talking.

Re:Donor body?!?!

[Black Gold Alchemist]

If the donor body was able to talk, we would have a much bigger problem to worry about...

All it kept saying was "Brains!" over and over again.

Re:Donor body?!?!

[freeze128]

Oooh, look who knows so much! It turns out that the donor was MOSTLY DEAD. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

Re:Donor body?!?!

[sayno2quat]

Well, there's really only one thing you can do with all dead. Go through their clothes and look for loose change. Oh, and take they're larynx, too. Actually, I've heard they do that with mostly dead people, too, so nevermind.

Oh!

[SethThresher]

Well, that's what I get for skimming this headline earlier!

I thought this woman had her larynx transplanted ten or so years ago, and wasn't able to use it to speak until now. Note to self: read full article more.

Re:Oh!

[SethThresher]

Seriously? I got modded down for that for it being off topic? I thought that was well and good enough. Here, let me lay it out:

I heard this news this morning, and was impressed and sympathetic to this poor woman, who was unable to speak for ten years, after I had misunderstood and thought she had her larynx replaced ten years ago, but was unable to speak until just now. How awful that must have been, to have had the needed surgery and STILL be unable to speak, even more so after it was a self-inflicted injury mistakenly caused while under anesthesia!

But no, I was gladdened to see, upon reading this article that this was NOT the case, that she had not had the surgery ten years ago, but instead had it only recently, and has regained her voice in short order! She was still unable for ten years, but medical advances have given this back to her! How wonderful! This is going to mean so much for both her personally, and for the hundreds if not thousands of people worldwide who may be able to regain their ability to speak, or perhaps even speak for the first time in their lives! I can't imagine how it would be to be mute. Sure, we have sign language, and the written word, but there is something special about having a voice of your own. I value this gift, and am glad and thankful that this woman has had hers restored, and the implications of this procedure being used in the future is a wonderful thing. I feel foolish now for having performed an easily avoidable error by only skimming the news this morning and making assumptions based solely on this superficial reading. I have learned my lesson from this experience, and thus in the future will seek to remedy this mistake and prevent future misunderstandings.

Re:Oh!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sooooo tempted to mod that redundant ;)

Re:Oh!

[masterwit]

Yeah really you should have received no mod points in my opinion up or down. (I for one am one of the rare readers that browses at 1 with 0 "collapsed" so I saw this comment in the first place.) To be honest though I can see where the modding occurred as no discussion about the article actually took place, just your comment about the misunderstanding. Sometimes misunderstandings can be hilarious (or mildly funny). Don't sweat it though...modding here is done "quickly" and I have comments that I "thought" were intelligent and later rated troll. (In hindsight, I deserved it.) Truth is we all make mistakes or just like to post for the hell of it: no-one deserves a perfect score every time.

Don't sweat the small stuff :)

Re:Oh!

[SethThresher]

Oh, you're totally right. I really wasn't that upset about the whole thing in the first place. It was more of a "really? this is what we're doing?" kind of affair.

I had just expected to get ignored with that, and I thought it was close enough on topic, or I wouldn't have posted it ;)

The reason for the wall-o-text was largely due to me having a cruddy time at working and needed a faceless nameless person to vent at for a while. It also let me redeem it a bit, so I felt better after posting.

Thanks for the friendly pointers, they're appreciated (: I try not to sweat the small stuff (oh no! someone misunderstood my post on the INTERNET), but everyone once in a while you just need to let it out, you know? In review: dag yo, voicebox surgery! Isn't medical advancement mind-boggling?? I wonder what else we'll get to witness in our lifetimes?

Re:Oh!

[fahlesr1]

I wonder what else we'll get to witness in our lifetimes?

I'm getting my laser eye installed next week.

Re:Oh!

[masterwit]

Yeah I hear that.

I wonder what else we'll get to witness in our lifetimes?

Now there is both a scary and exciting thought.

Ebert?

[nebaz]

I wonder if Roger Ebert could be helped by something like this.

Re:Ebert?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing short of a brain transplant would help that idiot.

Re:Ebert?

[Jakester2K]

To AC: Uh... nice....

To the OP: I don't think so. I believe his problem is in his mouth, not his larynx/trachea.

Re:Ebert?

[Anonymous Coward]

No - given his history of multiple recurrent head and neck cancers, he wouldn't be a candidate for a transplant. He would need to be on lifetime immunosuppression, which would drastically increase his risk of another recurrence.

So far, the two people they've picked for transplants have essentially had trauma -- the first was a crush injury, the second was surgery-related subglottic stenosis. I doubt we'll see the indications widened drastically over the next several years.

Re:Ebert?

[jcenters]

Considering that he lacks a jaw, I would say no.

Human beings are closer to being an idea

[h00manist]

If every part of anyone's body can be replaced, and even completely transfigured and upgraded for various other better parts, what is a human being?

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[RazzleFrog]

We are basically brains attached to a bunch of replaceable parts.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A temporary pattern encoded in matter. A standing wave in a strange attractor. What the hell difference does it make? Bring on the technology, I want to live longer!

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[preaction]

Yeah, I had to go bring my eyes in for their 20-year tune-up, and they were rooting around in my liver and noticed a bit of cirrosis causing some blockage so I'm gonna have to go back in and get that removed. Might have them take a look at my spleen while they're at it, my blood cell count has sounded a bit low recently.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Bicentennial Man for a good treatise of that concept.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[bwintx]

So your ears have been in your spleen? Interesting.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[DigiShaman]

It's more basic then that. Every human being is made up of about 60 Trillion cells working together in a symbiotic relationship. So when breaking down the "Unit", at what level do you start addressing life? The Cell, the Human being, civilization, or the entire Biosphere?

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[mcgrew]

I know people with artificial hips, knees, and shoulders. I have an artificial focusing lens in my left eye. How does being a cyborg make any of us less human?

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[guruevi]

Turk: So, dude, you don't understand. When I operate, I don't see a person, I see a machine with parts that need to be replaced and circuits that need to be rewired.
J.D.: So you think you're a robot mechanic?
Turk: As a surgeon, the more detached I am, the more focused I am. And it's pretty impossible to feel focused or detached when this guy's family's watching every move I make.
J.D.: Well, I wouldn't worry about that. Mr. Milligan only has a son and Elliot lost him.
Turk: Awesome!... For me.

Dr. Cox: It's actually a pretty sweet deal for them. After their loved ones are stripped for parts like a 1998 Mitsubishi Mirage, we treat them to some free cold cuts and a chance to hear you regurgitate some trite quotes about their family members sacrifice that you found on the Internet.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Galestar]

Or if you're lazy you could watch the movie by the same name. Obviously not as good or in-depth, but gives you a quick 90min overview. :)

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[h4rr4r]

So firm disbelief in a unicorns and leprechauns requires a leap of faith too?

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A miserable pile of secrets.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Human transmutation is one of alchemy's biggest taboos.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A cylon.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[snspdaarf]

Come on. Ears in the spleen are nothing. There are lots of people in the world that have their larynx in their rectum.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Nick Number]

If every part of anyone's body can be replaced, and even completely transfigured and upgraded for various other better parts, what is a human being?

A captain of the Ship of Theseus.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[mcgrew]

Yes, but not quite so big a leap of faith.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Velex]

And the really scary thing is that our brains are a bunch of replaceable parts, too.

(We just haven't figure out how quite yet.)

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[RazzleFrog]

Well the question is how much of the brain is really part of "self". Obviously a congresswoman has a bullet pass through her brain and she is still herself but at what point does that change.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[masterwit]

Morpheus: What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.
[holds up a Duracell battery]
Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.
Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
-credit IMDB

I had to because no-one else had made the joke. (Moral obligation)

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[misexistentialist]

The self, it does exist.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[HeckRuler]

No, the scary part is that the software running on the hardware get's reprogrammed constantly and that the whole concept of self is more fluid then we like to admit.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Labcoat Samurai]

Well the question is how much of the brain is really part of "self". Obviously a congresswoman has a bullet pass through her brain and she is still herself but at what point does that change.

Good question. At the time, some said here.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[geekoid]

Not your body.

I can't wait to be able to grow new body parts for replacements.

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoted from Deus Ex:

NSF Terrorist 1: "That's the difference right there. Just take a look at him."
NSF Terrorist 2: "Bad?"
NSF Terrorist 1: "They cut off his arm, replaced half of his face."
NSF Terrorist 2: "Hermann, right? He's a good soldier. Killed three of our men."
NSF Terrorist 1: "They'd've replaced his whole body if it would've improved performance. If that's how you judge a man -- by performance -- then eventually it's not about people but upgrades, versions, functionality..."
NSF Terrorist 2: "All I know is we could use a few mechs for ops like this."
NSF Terrorist 1: "Soon as we buy into the cult of the machine we're just like them."
NSF Terrorist 2: "Rhetoric, always more rhetoric."

Re:Human beings are closer to being an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people with artificial hips, knees, and shoulders. I have an artificial focusing lens in my left eye. How does being a cyborg make any of us less human?

Ask bellafalaka

A major miracle

[Anonymous Coward]

"she is now able to talk easily for long periods of time"

I suspect that for a woman, this ranks right up there with being cured of cancer...

On a more serious note...

[Myji Humoz]

This is a seriously amazing time to live in, as multidisciplinary medical research teams are finding ways to give patients second chances at a relatively normal life. I can't imagine not being able to speak again for the rest of my life, (seriously, try taking a vow of silence for a single day) but I'm glad that the pool of "horribly life changing events without a cure" is getting whittled down bit by bit. Kudos to the research and operations team, and best of luck to the patient.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live on my own. I don't go out much. A few times over the last year I've realised I've gone a week without speaking to anyone. It's not that hard.

Re:On a more serious note...

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, every time I see one of these articles I forward to my "anti-(western)medicine" friends. You know the ones - they use words like Big Pharma and Quacks all the time, and are convinced the "Man" is keeping various life-saving herbs and natural remedies out of our hands because "there's no money in them".

I wonder which herb or tree bark fixes the physical inability to speak? Which one massively, provably brings down the death rates from breast cancer or leukemia? Which one fixes your busted ass knee or your broken arm?

Re:On a more serious note...

[h4rr4r]

None do that, but some of them can make all of that less painful or let dieing cancer patients eat. Mostly just one herb, that for some strange reason some states call medicine, the synthetic form is medicine, but the plant is as illegal as Crack on the federal level.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lord knows finding a replacement ass knee of the right size is near impossible in this day, and they just don't make them like they used to. I'm glad the economics finally worked out that most places will perform the repair in house instead of swapping it out with a shitty piece of a tin, and scrapping the old part.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, try taking a vow of silence for a single day

I haven't done it, but I imagine it gets much easier with both duration and experience, similar to the initial effects of sleep deprivation or fasting.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is an ass-knee?

Re:On a more serious note...

[unkiereamus]

I work in (real) medicine, I'm a fervent believer in it, and I use the phrase "Big Pharma", not to degrade the medical practices, but rather the business decisions.

My favorite example is the drug Zofran, it is the gold standard in chemo anti-nausea meds (with some arguments to be made for pot, but I'll not get into that.). We're talking the chemo patients who haven't been able to keep any food down for a week, and nothing else worked, unless they had particularly good insurance, Zofran was the last option, and it almost always worked...the reason it was the last choice is that it was sold for a bit over a thousand dollars a dose.

When it came off patent, and the generic manufacturers got started on it, would you care to guess how much they were selling it for?

Go ahead, guess.

Nope, you're wrong, about a dollar fifty a dose.

Now, I can have some sympathy for the argument that they need to recover the R&D costs, but due to what amounts to legal maneuvering, they managed to extend their patent for basically 15 years from FDA Approval to it coming off-patent...Did they really need 15 years of about a 70,000% markup?

That's my favorite example, but it's far from the only one.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

If your "anti-(western)medicine" friends. You know the ones - they use words like Big Pharma and Quacks all the time, and are convinced the "Man" is keeping various life-saving herbs and natural remedies out of our hands" are the same as mine, the answer to all of the above is "Legalize Pot".

Re:On a more serious note...

[geekoid]

So?

Make a different drug and give it away.

How much money are they allowed to make? do YOU make that decision?

I couldn't find out it's development cost, so I can't comment on your markup.

Plus, the money doesn't just cover the dev costs for this, but for other drugs and experiments that didn't make it to market.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as the inability to speak being fixed by an herb... it wasn't fixed in this case by pharmacology either, so that's a very thin strawman you've got there.

My ability to have a productive life depends on pharmacology, but I am well aware that most drugs are synthesized versions of chemicals found in ordinary plants. Why do you think they got researched in the first place? Maybe you think a chemist woke up one morning and said "I just had a great idea for a painkiller! It will be shaped like... this... and so block the binding of (blah blah blah)... even though it's only the 1800s and it will be over 100 years before science is able to envision molecules to the degree that we could even dream of theorizing how folded proteins interact!"

No. The bark of the white willow tree was commonly used by midwives and grandmothers to make a pain which was given to reduce fever and ease joint aches. Testing found that it was indeed efficacious. Eventually the active ingredient was found to be acetylcetylcholic acid. Now we call it aspirin.

Re:On a more serious note...

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to recover not only R&D costs from that drug, but also the R&D costs for the 20 drugs that failed before they came up with a winner. I agree the laws are stacked in big pharma's favor, and patents don't expire quickly enough. But you need to take into account a more complete picture of costs to make a sound argument. (and yes i work in biotechnology).

Re:On a more serious note...

[Pence128]

Fun fact: the amount of money drug companies spend on research is about half of what they spend on advertising.

Finally

[shinigami sama]

Finally I can get that operation to swap out my voice box with Patrick Stewart's. Make it so!

Some amazing news!

[hesaigo999ca]

This gives hope to just how much we can do to damaged body parts, even reattaching nerves from a different owner to a part/organ, which obviously needs nervous system, to know when to send a command to the larynx that you want to say oh, uh, or ah.... very cool indeed! Cant wait till we are able to exchange info from a synthetic body part to organic nerve endings in order to come up with cybernetic body parts that actually do interface with the body seamlessly

Re:Some amazing news!

[ZankerH]

That's just the beginning. The real fun begins when you start replacing inefficient, organic computing substrate - the nervous system - with a synthetic one.

Re:Some amazing news!

[RazzleFrog]

The problem is that they haven't figure out how to keep the body from rejecting these parts without suppressing the immune system which obviously isn't a good thing in the long run. I'd think that is the bigger obstacle right now - more than the technology.

Re:Some amazing news!

[RightSaidFred99]

Yeah, hitting the science fiction books a bit too much. This isn't even in the vaguest theoretical realm of imagined possibility yet. It could be impossible (people seem to think Science can do Magic if we just give it enough time), or it could be 2000 years away (like we'll survive as a species that long).

Re:Some amazing news!

[h4rr4r]

Our species has been around a lot longer than 2000 years, no reason it won't make it that long. It should certainly not be impossible to record whatever information is a human and emulate the hardware, probably will be hundreds of years at least before we can though. We are just bio-mechanical machines.

Re:Some amazing news!

[mcgrew]

Cant wait till we are able to exchange info from a synthetic body part to organic nerve endings in order to come up with cybernetic body parts that actually do interface with the body seamlessly

The interface between my left eye's focusing muscles and the CrystaLens is seamless, but it's a mechanical linkage, not electrochemical. I'm waiting to see my cousin get out of the wheelchair he's sat in for the last half century.

Re:Some amazing news!

[RightSaidFred99]

Our species didn't have the capacity to destroy all human life on the planet until the late 20th century. And our ability to harm ourselves is only accelerating. Even if we don't eradicate human life, there's definitely a good chance of a massive stall - e.g. 95% of humanity dying, technology regressing somewhat, etc...

Re:Some amazing news!

[h4rr4r]

We don't even have that now. Even all using all the nukes we have it would not wipe us all out.

Re:Some amazing news!

[h4rr4r]

Nice, mod down all my posts because you don't like one of them. Have fun wasting your time asshole, I have lots of karma.

Re:Some amazing news!

[RightSaidFred99]

Sure we could. If we (first world humanity) built the dirtiest nuclear weapons we could imagine and also bioengineered some sweet smallpox, Ebola, and a few other nasties and released them on the world at the same time we could eradicate all human life within 50 years I bet.

First you nuke the shit out of all the low population areas - wilderness areas, etc... Then you let loose your bio attacks. Then 6 months later you nuke the shit out of everything else. Maybe add some satellite based nuclear weapons to look for any signs of life and drop nukes on it.

Of course, that would be an intentional effort. But I said "capability". As of now nothing we would do unintentionally looks like it would totally wipe out humanity (including WW3 with full nuclear commit by all powers), but that could change rapidly with new technologies.

Re:Some amazing news!

[hesaigo999ca]

Actually, the movie bicentennial man approaches this in reverse,
a robot who indirectly gets AI, now is thinking on his own,
and starts to make body parts for humans that last longer then real ones,
but he also makes organic parts for robots to know what it is like to age

The lines blur, that we will become more machine then man, into a full mechanical body will we transfer our consciousness, therefor will be fully robotic, then when everyone has life spans of 100 years or so, some of them will get bored, and start creating organic bodies again to re transfer out of...

this is the cycle of life between merging of 2 species (robot and man)...we will always want to change things, even when we first started, it was opposite of what we want now or tomorrow.

Re:Some amazing news!

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be a moot issue. We already have cloned tissues; cloned organs are not so far away.

if Stephen Hawking gets this operation

[Anonymous Coward]

... will he stop talking about neutron stars and start babbling about American Idol?

That's awesome

[Nihn]

It's nice to see some nice news here on slashdot...now we get to see how many days goes by before Microsoft, Google, or Time/Warner decide they own the copyright for the word and/or use of the Voice Box ©. Or maybe Apple will make it the iVoice ©. Or you can use it for a monthly fee, and comes with celebrity voice DLC so you can sound like your favorite singer....

6 Million Dollar Woman!

[paranoid123]

So she has a new pancreas, kidney, and now voicebox and windpipe! "Gentlemen, we can rebuild her. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic woman. Brenda Jensen will be that woman. Better than she was before. Better...stronger...faster."

Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

And still nobody gives a shit about that ...

Her voice or the donor's?

[Stenchwarrior]

How much does the voice-box lend to a person's unique speech vs. the geometry of the throat, mouth and sinuses? If she's out at the mall the donor's family hears her speak will they think the deceased has come back from the dead?

Re:Her voice or the donor's?

[RazzleFrog]

I'd imagine it is much like a trumpet and it's mouthpiece. If you put a trumpet mouthpiece on a trombone it's probably more likely going to sound like a weird trombone than a weird trumpet.

Re:Her voice or the donor's?

[RightSaidFred99]

Read the article - it's mostly how the lungs pump the air, mouth, lips, tongue, etc.. form the words. voice-box has very little to do with it.

Re:Her voice or the donor's?

[Stenchwarrior]

I read the article, believe it or not. I totally missed the side-note addressing that very question. Thank you.

On the other side of the coin...

[cayenne8]

...millions of married men around the world let out a collective *SIGH*

"Damn...now I'll never be able to get her to shut up...never...."

its a good thing but its still creepy

[circletimessquare]

when you receive a donor liver, kidney, lung, etc. from a donor, it's invisible. but a donor's voice?

it's just so personal

you open your mouth, and out comes the voice of someone else, who is dead

creepy!

of course its still a wonderful gift, but its just a creepy wonderful gift, that's all i'm saying

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[h4rr4r]

Voice is impacted by far more than a larynx. Shape of mouth, the way you form your words with your tongue, lips, teeth, the shape of your sinuses and probably lots of other stuff I left out.

The voice of the dead person will not be coming out of your mouth.

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[circletimessquare]

yes, i understand that. you have not negated my point. it's still someone else's voice. someone who knew the dead person will be able to pick it out

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[h4rr4r]

No they would not. For further evidence RTFA.

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't negate your point for the same reason I didn't shoot a unicorn this morning.

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

You're fucking retarded. Was your mother an alcoholic when she was pregnant with you?

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[circletimessquare]

mom! is that you?

Re:its a good thing but its still creepy

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hazard a guess that the recipient's voice would still be different from the donor's even though it is the same larynx. Some people "speak through their nose" while others "speak more with their diaphragm". Then there is the tongue movement, teeth, etc.. The way a person speaks is a complex combination of hardware and software. Granted, the voice will most likely resemble that of the donor's but I doubt it will be the same.

Singers

[snookiex]

So if a [known] singer signs in to be a donor after he/she dies, can the person who "receives" the voice use it for commercial purposes?

What happened to the first one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did she wear it out? Is she going to wear this one out, too?

Could be worse.

[DigiShaman]

I'm so glad it wasn't a robotic mouth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD_NdnYrDzY

Grammar Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

During her press conference she said, "People don't hang up on me no more." Too bad the doctors couldn't fix her horrible grammar while they were at it.

Hasta la vista, baby.

[DarthVain]

My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer.

Speechless

[ckhorne]

The donor was contacted after the surgery for comments, but was speechless. In a less documented veterinary story, the cat got his tounge...

However, the larynx recipient had a number of things she was dying to say for the past 11 years.

Re:Software still missing

[Anonymous Coward]

A human is the sum of its parts (+software) uniquely formed by its environment.

Now if only we had a way to recreate the software in all its glory.

The problem for this woman...

[dvoecks]

was that the donor was Barry White.

Easy, easy...

[surzirra]

That's a long sentence for a freshly transplanted larynx. Couldn't she say something a little shorter? Like, for example, "Hello, world."

A quote comes to mind ;)

[Moraelin]

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." -- Obi Wan, Star Wars Episode IV

interesting but what about this

[sneakyimp]

Woman's mind restored after linux transplant.

Re:interesting but what about this

[universegeek]

That happened after they put an Ubuntu in the oven... Yeah, I've got nothing here.

yay

[Eggbloke]

Go science!

He is lacking much of the lower jaw complex

[peter303]

There is a fold of skin hanging from his mounth over that area. When I saw him last year he looked OK from the front. A scarf helps. But the profile view looks different.

she? he? it? trans?

[Anonymous Coward]

i call them SHITs so as not to offend

poor neighbours

[crank-a-doodle]

well now she can have sex and shout at the top of her voice! but what about the neighbours, poor fellas!:P

Re:poor neighbours

[DamienNightbane]

Did you see the video? I don't think she could pay anyone to have sex with her.

Re:poor neighbours

[DamienNightbane]

Go ahead. Mod me down. She's still a crime against all sighted beings.