Slashdot Mirror
Neuroscientist: First-Ever Human Head Transplant Is Now Possible
dryriver writes "Technical barriers to grafting one person's head onto another person's body can now be overcome, says Dr. Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group. In a recent paper, Canavero outlines a procedure modeled on successful head transplants which have been carried out in animals since 1970. The one problem with these transplants was that scientists were unable to connect the animals' spinal cords to their donor bodies, leaving them paralyzed below the point of transplant. But, says Canavero, recent advances in re-connecting spinal cords that are surgically severed mean that it should be technically feasible to do it in humans. (This is not the same as restoring nervous system function to quadriplegics or other victims of traumatic spinal cord injury.)"
I suppose it depends on whether a larger proportion of personal distinctiveness resides above or below the neck, but I would guess it's closer to a head getting a body transplant, than to a body getting a head transplant.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
They are really putting a "new" body on the old head. Therefore this is a body transplant.
Head of Vecna, anyone? In other news, this plus cloning = "cure" for aging? Now if we can just figure out how to take all the skin and tissue on the skull and transplant that... oh wait. Nevermind. Face transplants.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What could possibly go wrong?
Why didn't somebody tell me my ass was so big?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Provided we find cures for Alzheimer's and other brain degenerative diseases, I wouldn't object living for another 100-200 years, preferably wearing young woman's bodies.
That's a body transplant!
You're ruining the joke. The doctors secretly hoped that colloquially, everyone would start calling it "a head job".
Ezekiel 23:20
So with this technique could you cure paralysis? If you were to make the surgical cuts above the damaged spinal tissue and then attach the old head to a new body without the spinal damage?
I'd really argue that because who you are is really all in the head, this is a body transplant rather than a head transplant.
TFA says that the idea is still rather speculative, but if it were to work I have to wonder how long it would take the brain in the head that was connected to a new body to figure out how to make the new body work. I doubt all the individual axons would connect perfectly in 1:1 fashion in the same way as it were on the old body. In fact I'd be surprised if any axons connected to the same corresponding one in the new body.
As an aside as a teenager I suffered a very serious injury to my wrist when my right hand went through a pane on a glass door. The glass basically sliced my wrist open to the bone. Aside from losing a lot of blood from the severed arteries, the radial nerve was completely severed and was microsurgically reconnected that night. The radial nerve basically gives your hand sensation from the thumb to the middle finger, and when the nerves first grew back, the sensations would come out in the wrong place - if I touched the inside of my middle finger the sensation would come out elsewhere on the hand. However after a few months things got "remapped" and the sensations all now come out in the correct places. I'd imagine this would be a more serious problem if a nerve that conducts some sensation is now connected to one that's supposed to activate a muscle.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
three words should put an end to this chicanery: Immortal Dick Cheney.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You are an example of why it shouldn't happen.
Oh okay. I haven't made a laughing stock of a malthusian all week and although it's only Tuesday, there seem to be fewer and fewer of you halfheads roaming the internet lately so I guess I'll take it where I find it.
Most humans are too stupid to realize the implications of longer life.
Good thing we have superior master race philosopher-princes such as yourself to show the way then, eh?
We are ALREADY over populated and unsustainable.
No, we aren't. Nowhere near. There is ample food and fresh water for the entire human race right now and plenty to spare. Where there are shortages the problems are invariably political.
We use energy from the planet faster than it is stored. We REQUIRE this energy to support the population of humans on the planet that is WAY past the point of natural balance.
Energy from the planet? What is that? You want energy it's raining on us from all sides and on high. If you covered a single digit percentage of the unused portions of the Sahara with old fashioned PV cells you could easily supply enough energy for all of Europe. And although I'm sure that a superior intellect such as yourself doesn't need this pointed out, that's not a recommended course of action but an illustration of the universe of insane abundance we live in. NO we do not require oil for transportation, NO we do not require oil for plastics, NO we do not require oil for fucking fertiliser, google the reasons yourself.
What exactly do you think will happen when people live twice as long?
We already know what's going to happen when people start living longer healthier lives, einstein, they have fewer children. Half of the countries in the developed world are already at below replacement birthrates. People stop having children or start having them later.
Do you think some other magical solution is going to pop up when lets us cram even more people into the same space.
We can not feed ourselves now, without oil, and the oil is being used ridiculously faster than its being created.
Oil, oil, oil. Try a little science instead. http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.ie/2007/11/314-peak-oil-and-fertilizer-no-problem.html Boom, headshot.
Hopefully this shock therapy has rattled your teeth enough that you'll think twice before unloading another bladderload on the internet.