I’m thinking of the book by C.S. Lewis - That Hideous Strength - the third of his scifi trilogy. If you haven’t read that trilogy you should but “spoiler alert” in the third book the bad guys re-animate a head and use it to control people.
Hideous and creepy medical experiments. Bet that German magazine is really interested.
It’s a body transplant not a head transplant. “Transplant” references the bad part that is being replaced with a good part. I don’t know why it’s always phrased wrong as “head transplant”. Maybe that guys head is the bad part, thinking a body transplant will actually work.
But if the mouse is limping from a spinal cord reflex arising BELOW the level of the transaction, it MEANS NOTHING. That Hideous Strength is a good reference but even that is way too hopeful. Like I posted yesterday, this is Rod Serling territory. Can you just imagine having your consciousness successfully preserved and then transferred, living, into a “donor body” to which you have no perceptual connection? Conscious life IN A VOID! An eternity with no way to even measure time? No sensation whatsoever. The ultimate, eternal, sensory deprivation. How long would it take you to go completely mad? Who would know? How?
For some reason, I’m thinking of that girl, Jahi McMath. She died three years ago, and, presumably, her family is maintaining her breathing artificially with parenteral nutrition to keep the body in a life-like state. Wouldn’t she be a great candidate for a brain transplant?
Of course, whatever brain is implanted would belong to a different person, and Jahi would remain dead. Even if such a procedure were possible, it cannot restore life to the brain dead. It would provide a body to a person whose body was damaged beyond repair but whose brain remained undamaged.
In any case, I seriously doubt that a brain transplant would be feasible. There are too many neural connections that would have to be reformed correctly. Furthermore, a brain that has been dead and frozen is highly unlikely to be functional. Even when freezing separated cells under optimal conditions, many cells don’t survive. Imagine the effects on a brain if 15%, 25%, or 50% of the cells were dead. Also, if this neurosurgeon wants to do such surgeries, he’d have to get independent review board (IRB) approval—which would be incredibly difficult. Maybe that’s why he’s going to China—because he knows that *no* ethics board will approve of such experimentation in the Western world.
And the benefit of this is?
What did he repair? Looks like he broke something.
Frawhkenschteen.
I can foresee a time when a person could grow their own clone. However, their clone would be without a brain but otherwise healthy. Then the patient would transplant their head / brain into the “new” body or harvest organs from the clone.
Not advocating - just speculating on where the technology is headed - no pun intended
Sergio Canevero is going to China to do a head transplant.
Supposedly.
Where are the head and body coming from? We know where the body is coming from - from an executed prisoner. Is the head coming from someone rich and powerful who is terminally ill? Or is the head coming from another poor prisoner who has been turned into an experimental animal?
If it was two prisoners you could switch them both...two experiments. Sick thought, but the whole thing is sick.
The spinal cord repair is good, though. Unless it was transplanted fetal cells or cords.