

Terminally Ill Man Willing to Have World's First Full Head Transplant - cpeterso
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/terminally-ill-man-to-have-worlds-first-full-head-transplant.html

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sridca
This comment summarizes my opinion on this subject: "The doctor can easily
prove his technique works by transplanting the heads of two rats, preferably a
white and brown one. If they survive and could walk around, not only will he
get all the funding he wants, but the Nobel Prize in Medicine."

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Simp
Seems like it has already been done:

In 2002, other head transplants were also conducted in Japan in rats. Unlike
the head transplants performed by Dr. White, however, these head transplants
involved grafting one rat's head onto the body of another rat that kept its
head. Thus, the rat ended up with two heads.[10]

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toxicFork
I consider that to be even better! Did the other rat's head have any way to
control anything in the body, or was it more like a guest?

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bjwbell
I'm guessing it's more like it died after a short period of time.

If you look at the history of head transplants (yes a gruesome area), they ALL
end badly for the subject.

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nostromo
More of a body transplant, no?

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gd1
This annoys me too. It's not a "head transplant". You can't get a new head.
You are your head. You're getting a new body is what's happening.

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manicdee
How sure are you of that?

What if it turns out that the brain is only a user interface and hardware
abstraction layer to the body, with "you" actually being a colony of microbes
living in the body (mainly the gut)?

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bjwbell
Funding & staff are not there!

Key quote "The cost... is estimated at over $10 million, ... the doctor has
failed to secure funding for the surgery itself and for the staff of 150
doctors and nurses"

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shiggerino
I'd suggest focusing on reattaching people's own severed spinal chords, to
perfect the procedure before doing something as risky and speculative as a
whole head transplant. If he can demonstrate that he can reliably reconnect
all the correct nerves in one person's spinal chord, it would be a major
breakthrough for millions of patients with spinal chord injuries, and then we
can begin talking about connecting other people's, which I assume have
different "pin-outs".

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david-given
Fixing a broken spinal chord is probably rather more difficult (based on my
extensive and indepth knowledge of the subject [ * ]), as there's likely to be
a substantial section of damaged chord --- crushed, for example. A clean cut
through an undamaged chord would provide two relatively undamaged surfaces. I
have heard of work in regenerating severed spinal chords in rats.

I'd be more inclined to be worried about whether the neurons on one side can
usefully bind to the neurons on the other. AFAIK the nerve mapping in the
spinal chord is more or less random. The rat experiment wouldn't test this, of
course.

[ * ] Disclaimer: while I have in-depth and extensive knowledge of some
subjects, this is not one of them.

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shiggerino
That makes sense, but as you say, the clean cut might not help the mapping
problem. Even if you can somehow figure out which ones belong where that must
be some very challenging microsurgery.

Maybe it would be possible to make a electronic, prosthetic section of spine
that can be reconfigured on the fly, a bit like an FPGA, that might be useful
for both injuries (where a damaged section needs to be replaced) and clean
cuts with unknown mapping. Unfortunately these kinds of brain-computer
interfaces seem prone to scarring, weakening the signal over time.

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david-given
It's probably easier to just let them hook up randomly and then stimulate the
brain into relearning the mappings. Infants do this as a matter of course
(that's what a lot of the random flailing babies do is for). An adult brain
may need a substantial amount of chemical help, though.

Ah, here's a short article on the work with rats:
[http://www.iflscience.com/brain/new-drug-boosts-nerve-
regrow...](http://www.iflscience.com/brain/new-drug-boosts-nerve-regrowth-
rats-spinal-cord-injuries)

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Simp
On Wikipedia i find 'It is argued that several up to now hopeless medical
conditions might benefit from such procedure.[9][15]'.

Many people's initial reaction is disgust. Which i don't blame them for. But
what if we can move past this? It might be a great medical advancement.

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blackkettle
doesn't it just replace it with another (nearly) hopeless condition? success
presumably means total quadriplegia - and this exacerbated most likely by
'total body rejection' \- or maybe even 'head rejection' depending on who is
in control!

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zamalek
More on Dr. Hunt Batjer's opinion of the operation:

> The problem is, fusing a head with a separate body (including spinal cord,
> jugular vein etc) could result in a hitherto never experienced level and
> quality of insanity.[1]

[1]: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/man-undergoing-
hea...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/man-undergoing-head-
transplant-could-experience-something-a-lot-worse-than-death-says-
neurological-expert-10164423.html)

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anon4
Exciting stuff, to be sure.

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fla
This TED talk from Dr. Canavero explains it a bit further.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmGm_VVklvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmGm_VVklvo)

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amelius
The assumption of the doctor is that all nerves in the spines of two organisms
are organized in exactly the same way. IANAMD, but this seems a bold
assumption.

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quadrature
Certainly IANAMDAW but cases with people who have suffered from paralysis have
shown that the brain has the capacity to rewire things through physical
rehabilitation exercises, so maybe it is possible.

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neals
Seems difficult to exercise something like liver function and stuff. But yeah
also IANAMDAWTF and the man is dying. Go for it, I'd say.

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nsns
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

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cbd1984
As it stands, there's a simple answer: The brain. The person is defined by
having a specific brain; you can swap out literally everything else and the
person will still be the same person.

This will be more relevant when pieces of the brain are being swapped out.

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suchow
Though I find it hard to relate to, many people consider their bodies to be
essential to their identity — they wouldn't be them without it. These people
find our intuition about what is essential similarly foreign.

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cbd1984
Some people have body dysmorphia issues, and some people just really identify
with looking a specific way. I understand that. However, some people really
identify with living in a specific location, too, but we don't usually regard
moving day as the death date of the person who moved.

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Sharlin
To be fair, AFAIK we don't really know how much the rest of the nervous system
is "attuned" to being connected to a specific brain and vice versa. That is,
even if the brainstem could be 100% connected to the spinal cord, we don't
know how hard it would be to adapt to the new body. Could it result in
something resembling the alien hand syndrome [1] or body integrity identity
disorder [2], for instance?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disorde...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disorder)

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shultays
Is this even legal? If a procedure is 100% lethal, wouldn't it be murder?

I mean it is murder even if both parties agrees right? What is different in
this case

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cbd1984
If the procedure is 100% lethal in theory, it's doctor-assisted suicide, which
is legal in some jurisdictions (in America) and illegal in others.

If the procedure is 100% lethal in practice, but survivable in theory, it's
medical research, and if good, non-coerced informed consent is given, I have a
very hard time seeing any prosecutor prosecuting the case as even manslaughter
or similar.

After all, there are other procedures which are only performed when there's a
small hope of success; CPR out in the field is one of them. (High-end survival
estimate is less than 20%, more likely less than 10%.)

[http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/health/cpr-lifesaving-
stats/](http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/health/cpr-lifesaving-stats/)

[http://apps.health.qld.gov.au/acp/Public_Section/Resuscitati...](http://apps.health.qld.gov.au/acp/Public_Section/Resuscitation_Planning/resuscitationPlanning2.aspx)

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creshal
Another comparison would be bone marrow transplants, which can have a survival
rate of 15-20% in some cases… but it's still better than not doing anything.

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donkeyd
> the new body would come from a donor who is dead but otherwise healthy

Seems like a waste of a bunch of organs that could change many people's
lives...

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baddox
Why is that complaint valid? When this recipient dies, those organs can be
used to change many people's lives.

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sravfeyn
>When this recipient dies

I would say _if_ not _when_ (nitpicky)

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lerouxb
You mean there's a chance that this might render him immortal?

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20kleagues
Medical science has to move forward, no?

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nextw33k
Medical science has, however this Doctor is just making an outlandish claim.
There have been no tests on animals that worked and he's just hoping his
method of joining the spinal cords will work.

This isn't medicine, this is just someone with a superiority complex.

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stevep98
"the new body would come from a donor who is dead but otherwise healthy"....

LOL

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inspector-g
While the procedure itself is clearly outlandish, is it that difficult to
imagine a patient that died from brain-related complications (leaving the rest
of their body in otherwise good shape)?

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usaphp
What about bullet in a head?

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cbd1984
That would do it, yes.

