Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Extreme medicine: Head Transplants

Posted by Hemos on from the fun-with-scalpels dept.

Ry Jones writes "The Sunday Times is reporting that people like Bill Gates and Christopher Reed will soon be able to get head transplants. " Interesting idea, and as the article points out, it's been a goal for transplant science for the past couple decades. I'd like to have my head meet Arnold's body.

19 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. You guys are missing the obvious.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Hey, why not, after you get to a certain age, just clone your own body, maybe it could be genetically reengineered to remove certain defects like arthritis and diabetes from the DNA and then grow a new body sans head/brain. Then you could just attach your head to the genetically identical body and not have to worry about rejection.

    1. Re:You guys are missing the obvious.. by nuts · · Score: 2

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

      Ok, well, *just* do that.

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

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


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

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

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

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


      head transplanting initiated.
      please wait...


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

      and then, in the middle of the transplantation:


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

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


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

      AND...there would be a message:

      please run the transplantation manually.

      --
      Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.
    2. Re:You guys are missing the obvious.. by Hobbex · · Score: 2


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

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


      -
      /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  2. Grow one. by Skyshadow · · Score: 2
    You don't need to kill somebody -- just clone yourself a brainless body and move into that.

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

    ----

    --
    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  3. Re:obSlashdot Post: by John+Campbell · · Score: 2

    You forgot: 7) Yeah, but the real question is, will this operation make my head run Linux? and, of course: 8) F1RsT P05T D00D!!!!!!

  4. Oh yeah, and... by John+Campbell · · Score: 2

    10) Just imagine how many MP3s you could store in all those brains....

    Hmm... you could get a different song stuck in each head...

  5. Re:obSlashdot Post: by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2

    _You_ forgot
    8) If I get a bunch of heads and stick them all over my body can I turn myself into a Beowulf cl... *WHACK* ow! *WHACK* hey! *WHACK* eek!

  6. The Brain That Wouldn't Die! by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2

    Better yet, one that was actually MST3Ked!

  7. It was 'I Will Fear No Evil' by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2

    *grumble* and you had me looking up book-ographies to remind myself of the title ;)

  8. Re:Should that be body transplant? by Jamie+Zawinski · · Score: 2
    ``If you cut off my head, what would I say, me and my, me and my head or me and my body? What right has my head to call itself me? What right?''
  9. Transplants without killing? by Riddles · · Score: 2

    Has anyone read the article indeed?

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

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

    Kind regards,
    Mark Wormgoor

    1. Re:Transplants without killing? by dirty · · Score: 2

      I think the stuff is called telemorose or something along those lines. I saw a report on it that predicted that within 10 years we might be able to take a pill that would restore the telemorose on our DNA and essentially let us live forever. Apparently this would also prevent alztimers(i know that's spelled way wrong). Your brain does start to deteriorate after about age 20 and I doubt this process would stop it. Someone else mentioned that the human brain is thought to be good for atleast 300 years, so who knows. Maybe I'll get to be 30 for the next 250+ years. I just hope it prevents male pattern baldness too :)

      --

      -matt
  10. obSlashdot Post: by kuro5hin · · Score: 3
    1) Wow, imagine a whole roomful of heads transplanted onto one large body! It'd be a bitchin' Beowulf!

    2) Dood, wasn't this posted before?

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

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

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

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

    --
    There is no K5 cabal.
    I am not the real rusty.
  11. Re:Questions, questions by dirty · · Score: 2

    The heart can keep going for a short period of time w/o intervention from the brain, but I don't think you would be able to live out the rest of your life w/o your brain talking to your heart, not to mention other organs like, lungs, liver, kidneys. You probally could get a pacemaker to keep the heart going, a respirator for your lungs, dialasis for your kidneys, and an i.v. drip of all the nutrients your body needs. I think I'd personally rather be dead than live life like that, but then again, if i'm ever in that situation i might change my mind...

    --

    -matt
  12. Sick by kertaamo · · Score: 2

    I think I'm going to be sick.
    Anyway I would prefer to see Bill Gate's head on a stick.

  13. blood-cooling system by crow · · Score: 3

    Oh wow. That blood-cooling system would probably let me overclock my brain!

  14. An even more exciting use for this technology by Shoeboy · · Score: 3

    Robert J White, an American neurosurgeon, said he had developed a blood-cooling system that meant a living head could be disconnected from its blood supply for up to an hour without ill-effect. forget head transplants. With this device, I might be able to make it through all the meetings my manager keeps scheduling.
    --Shoeboy

  15. Re:Who supplies the body? by CryptdotX · · Score: 2

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

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

  16. Reconnect nerves? by Meph · · Score: 2

    Newscientist magazine recently carried an article about repairing damaged nerves. http://www.newscien tist.com/nsplus/insight/future/svendsen.html Common spinal injurys do a lot of damage but a clean knife cut could be fixable in the near future.

    Meph