Chinese Doctor Performs Head Transplants On Mice

An anonymous reader writes: Xiaoping Ren, a Chinese surgeon, has performed roughly 1,000 head transplants on mice since 2013 and says that monkeys are next. Some of the mice have lived as long as a day after the operations according to Ren and he hopes to have similar success with primates. With $1.6 million of funding so far, he says, "We want to do this clinically, but we have to make an animal model with long-term survival first. Currently, I am not confident to say that I can do a human transplant."

Comments

Work with cloned mice

[Karmashock]

The immune response would have to be serious.

if you have two genetically identical mice then swapping their heads should be more viable.

The interesting thing in so far as humans would be doing the same thing.

Forget the ethics for a moment. Lets say you got a clone of yourself... doing a head swap would be less of a big deal than grabbing some random other person and doing a head swap with them.

Re:Work with cloned mice

[Antique Geekmeister]

The idea of "new bodies for old" is an old one in fiction and in science. This was explored in some dramatic detail in Lois McMaster Bujold's stories of "Miles Vorkosigan". Old people would have a clone made, the clone raised in foster care until mature enough to support a full grown brain, and then the brain transplanted. Raising the clone required raising them to at least puberty, to support the brain and mature nervous system of the transplant candidate, and they were certainly sentient beings being sacrificed.

Re:Work with cloned mice

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, calling it successful because some lived for a whole day is not what I would call successful. Oh, the operation was a success but the patient had the bad manners of dying... Obviously you don't have it all in hand or they would go on living.

Re:Work with cloned mice

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing everyone always ignores is that no matter what, eventually your brain dies. Whether in you or after you've been uploaded to a computer or another brain or what have you. And when that happens *THAT* you is dead. *YOU* still experience the pain of death. YOU still cease to exist. There is something out there with your memories and thoughts, but they are not you any more than a photo album or journal is you.

Re:Work with cloned mice

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that everyone like you always ignores is that no matter what, cells are always dying. Constantly! Even brain cells! And then they get replaced by other cells! But that doesn't mean you cease to be you.

Will it be easy to transfer a person to a new body, new brain, or an artificial brain? Heck no. But I can see no reason why, given advanced enough technology, "I" must die in order for "me" to live on.

Re:Work with cloned mice

[ranton]

The thing everyone always ignores is that no matter what, eventually your brain dies. Whether in you or after you've been uploaded to a computer or another brain or what have you. And when that happens *THAT* you is dead. *YOU* still experience the pain of death. YOU still cease to exist. There is something out there with your memories and thoughts, but they are not you any more than a photo album or journal is you.

This is very easily solved as a concept, although the implementation will obviously be insanely difficult. As another poster mentioned, your brain cells are constantly dying already. You still feel like you probably because it happens so gradually. So the answer to replacing your brain is the same; do it gradually. Conceptually you would be hooking your brain to a helmet filled with electronics that slowly replace your brain functions. At the end of the process your brain is completely electronic and you are still you. This is the theory anyway.

If you consider this scenario to be the same as you experiencing death, then you have already died perhaps hundreds of times in your lifetime so far.

Anyone else get the feeling

[John Jorsett]

that we're moving into "Island of Dr. Moreau" territory?

Re:Anyone else get the feeling

[Grishnakh]

Doubtful IMO. While there have been quite a few sci-fi stories and movies about clones being used for organ harvesting, I really think we're going to figure out before long how to grow replacement organs without a clone. There's already a lot of work being done on this, and I think they already are doing significant work like this with artificial skin. This is what all this stem-cell research is all about, after all: being able to grow things quickly and easily, whether it's a replacement eyeball or liver or heart, or some artificial meat so you don't need to kill animals to enjoy a burger.

And think about it: why would you want to wait 20 years for a clone to grow to maturity so you can harvest its organs for yourself so you can live longer, when you could just grow yourself a new heart (without a host body at all) using stem cells, in just a few weeks or so?

Not too long after that, we're going to figure out many more rejuvenation therapies, and aging will simply be another disease to be fought against and eventually eradicated. You won't need to do a head transplant, because you can just have some pharmaceuticals (possibly including some nanites) injected into you periodically and maintain your age at 25 indefinitely.

Re:Anyone else get the feeling

[drinkypoo]

And think about it: why would you want to wait 20 years for a clone to grow to maturity so you can harvest its organs for yourself so you can live longer, when you could just grow yourself a new heart (without a host body at all) using stem cells, in just a few weeks or so?

Let's just take it a step further: stem cells seem to just know what to do if you can deliver them to the site. What if you had a treatment that would kill off old cells, and direct stem cells to the proper locations efficiently? Why bother growing a new body when you can just repair the one you've got?

A day?

[penguinoid]

Some of the mice have lived as long as a day after the operations according to Ren and he hopes to have similar success with primates.

Maybe he should try to have his patients survive more than one day, before moving up to primates.

Re:A day?

[azcoyote]

Maybe if he just keeps stapling the monkey head onto a new body once a day, the head will be able to live a long and horrifying life.

Finally!

[pushing-robot]

We'll be able to give our decrepit MPs and congressmen new, healthy brains!

One day?

[Culture20]

How about switching to another species after you get the lifetime close to half of normal. These aren't fruit flies.

Why even bother?

[Nyder]

I can't understand how head transplants are even helpful in the real world. I can understand limb transplants, livers, kidneys, but heads? How often does someone lose their head and there is another head ready to take it's place? Seems to me like this is one thing that will almost never have use for anything practical if it's even possible.

This guy has unrealistic expectations

[meerling]

"Some of the mice have lived as long as a day after the operations according to Ren and he hopes to have similar success with primates."
Really? He'd better get survival rates down to something close to normal lifespans before he moves up to primates or he's an idiot.
I wonder if he's even bothered to look at the old Soviet attempts at this. With that short "survival" duration, I highly doubt it.

I call shenanigans

[pesho]

How is this physically possible? 1000 transplants in under three years! This is more than one serious microsurgery per day. An article in WSJ says he leaves the brain stem of the acceptor along with the so that it can control breading and hearth beat. This would mean that he is just connecting the blood vessels of the donor head to the circulatory system on the acceptor, without connecting the nerves. This seems more feasible to me, but hardly warrants the bombastic headlines. Does anybody have a link to an original research paper?

Wait a minute...

[no-body]

"Despite the mind-blowing possibilities", "ground breaking" - ????

1000 Mice killed with a 0 success rate and primates next.
1.6 Million funding so far - more to come, as it seems.
What is the actual benefit, how many humans would be able to take advantage of such a procedure at what success rate and which result?

Just for reference, the much hailed CPR has a success rate of - depending where one looks - 6 or 10 % and of those, half have maybe a halfway liveable life, the other half will be tied to an artificial reparator working against their native breath rythm for the rest of their remaining life, not considering remaining mental capacities.

If it really happens that someone gets injured to bad that a new head would be adequate - or, the other way around, the body is wasted and a replacement could be helpful (?)... is this worth it?

All sounds pretty much sick to me. Some ego trip of doing something somebody has never done and wasting living creatures en mass for this.
Maybe a mandatory mental health check should be done on a couple of individuals running those projects before start. Seems basic respect for life in general is missing here.

Hmmmm ... I got chucked in the loony bin for this!

[MarkTina]

You dismantle the neighbourhood cats and dogs to make yourself a Labrapussy and they chuck you in the nut house .. but if I was a "Doctor" I'd be praised for my work!

Unfair!!!

Up to 1 day survical on mice is meaningless

[gweihir]

Translates roughly to "we have no clue how to do this right".