
Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage - todayiamme
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821155/
======
rtpg
>In 1970, Robert White and his colleagues successfully transplanted the head
of a rhesus monkey on the body of another one, whose head had simultaneously
been removed. The monkey lived 8 days and was, by all measures, normal, having
suffered no complications.[28]

I would think that living only 8 days would be a "complication"

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Yeah, and "by all measures, normal" was also bullshit, the monkey was
paralyzed from the neck down with no spinal connection!

I can't believe we have so little regard for the rights of species very nearly
as intelligent and probably equally aware as us. It would be extreme torture
to go through a beheading and reattachment with probably little or no
anesthesia, and then be forced to live for 8 days in a fucked-up painful &
dying state, and no way to escape or even move!

~~~
jahewson
Nowadays there are ethics committees and they would not allow such an
experiment, thankfully.

~~~
Fuxy
And this is where it gets dicey.

These experiments are necessary in order to further our understanding of
biology we cannot just rule them out as cruel since if we don't do them
someone else will.

In China they use political prisoners as involuntary organ donors for gods
sake. Hell you can get donor organs within weeks in China while it takes
months or even years in other countries just to give you an idea.

So the question is would you rather have countries with less regard for human
or animal lives do the experiments and reap its benefits while you stick your
head in the sand or would you do the experiments yourself while attempting to
treat the creatures in the most humane way possible?

~~~
justsee
Your moral framework appears to give a pass to any activities another person
is capable of doing, which doesn't appear to be much of a framework at all.

In particular, it would also logically support any experimentation on live
humans which could provide greater understanding than would otherwise be the
case. This position was infamously held by wartime goverments in World War II
and one I think most reasonable people would reject completely.

A consistent moral framework which requires minimisation of human suffering
really has to expand to consider more species capable of suffering.

~~~
Fuxy
My moral framework requires consent from human beings as for other creatures i
see no problem experimenting with them as log as we put in the best effort
possible in reducing their suffering in the process.

And no my framework doesn't give pass to any activities another person is
capable of doing it give pass to any activity is necessary in order to advance
our understanding and in the future save more lives.

If you're going to qualify all creatures on the same level then we shouldn't
be experimenting on lab rats either don't you think?

We shouldn't be killing all those malaria spreading mosquitoes either since
their creatures too right?

~~~
justsee
> My moral framework requires consent from human beings as for other creatures
> i see no problem experimenting with them as log as we put in the best effort
> possible in reducing their suffering in the process

Consent is only possible in high-functioning adult humans though. I would
expect you would make the concession that 'valid consent' would exclude very
young and old humans and the intellectually disabled. But they are no
different in this respect to members of other species that can't (or wouldn't
if capable) give their consent.

If you see no problem in inflicting suffering on another conscious being that
is non-human then why is reducing their suffering even important to you? If it
is important, then why isn't it as important as the suffering of a human of
reduced intellectual function?

> If you're going to qualify all creatures on the same level then we shouldn't
> be experimenting on lab rats either don't you think?

Yes, a consistent moral framework would likely agree with this sentiment,
assuming consciousness and the ability to suffer is the important
consideration.

> We shouldn't be killing all those malaria spreading mosquitoes either since
> their creatures too right?

Well that is the position of adherents of Jainism [1], but it does really
depend on what test of consciousness and capability of suffering you think is
necessary to meet, rather than whether something is simply a 'creature'.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism#Non-
violence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism#Non-violence)

------
zizee
If they can successfully do this, it raises interesting
questions/opportunities to grow a brainless clone of yourself in a vat, then
transplant your head from your elderly body onto a fresh new body.

I don't think the transfer will necessarily make your brain young and fresh
again, but it might have unexpected positive effects:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9615779/Transfusion-of-
you...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9615779/Transfusion-of-young-blood-
could-delay-onset-of-diseases-like-Alzheimers.html)
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.htm)

~~~
Cthulhu_
There have been experiments that show getting 'young' blood transfused has a
rejuvinating effect; might be that works on the brain too to some degree. But
for now, there will be limits. Not to mention moral issues - is a clone of you
sentient? Can you kill it off in order to preserve your own self?

~~~
adrianN
If it is a brainless clone then it's not sentient. I don't see the moral
issue. It's the same as growing a replacement organ, you just grow all of them
at once.

------
JoshTriplett
Arguably, this isn't a "head/spine transplant", it's a "body transplant".
Whichever part the brain is in is the important part.

~~~
IvyMike
Depends on the person.

~~~
skrebbel
Which of the 2?

------
zizee
Made me think of this story:

 _But Demikhov became even more famous for another crazy transplant
experiment: Dog head transplants.

Following a first successful transplant by his colleague Professor A. G.
Konevskiy at the Volgograd State Medical University, Demikhov started to
regularly exchange heads of dogs._

[http://io9.com/5776600/the-story-of-the-giant-dog-headed-
rob...](http://io9.com/5776600/the-story-of-the-giant-dog-headed-robot-that-
never-was)

------
mbenjaminsmith
Can anyone here better explain the hand-wavy stuff about re-connecting the
spinal cord? I (incorrectly or not) think of the spinal cord as bunch of
wires, presumably that have to be connected to the correct counterpart
individually. In the article they talk about reconnecting the spinal column in
~2 minutes, which seems to rule that out.

~~~
arm55
In theory, nerve connection is quite easy. Put two nerves of the same type
right up next to each other and they will fuse and form a continuous signal
transduction pathway. However, the success rate for this is somewhere on the
order of 80%. Assuming there are ~100 connections to be made, 0.80^100 isn't
very enticing. Perhaps using the compounds he talks about can increase the
success rate, but this is still on fairly shaky grounds.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
Actually, if I'm reading wikipedia correctly, there are only 62 connections
that need to be made. While that doesn't help with the error rate it seems
feasible to make that many connections individually in a short period of time,
if that is in fact what they're doing.

~~~
icegreentea
The spinal nerves (by and large) originate in the spinal cord at their level
of origin. That is to say that if you severed the spinal cord at some point,
you could not 'split out' the connections corresponding to the lower spinal
nerves from the overall bundle. Amongst other things, the spinal cord also
contains neurons that form closed circuits without reaching the brain (these
make up your reflexes).

So, if you transplanted the head and spinal cord, then use, you could somehow
make '62 connections'. If you transplanted 'the head' you would have to join
the entire spinal cords.

Finally, each nerve is really 'a cable bundle', so the process of joining them
is kinda tricky, and beyond the scope of my knowledge. Needless to say, the
authors of the paper think that it can work. Their references likely can point
you in the right direction.

------
csense
What if it turns out that people can greatly extend their lifespans, or even
live forever, by undergoing successive head transplants -- but every time one
person gets transplanted, someone else has to die to provide the body?

What if we're headed for a world where the rich and powerful hire body
snatchers to kidnap people off the street to provide bodies whenever they need
a transplant? What if there are loopholes in the criminal justice system or
covert government agencies that will allow people with the right connections
to get access to an organized supply of helpless victims?

~~~
dmitrygr
Scary, but science marches on no matter the possible misuses of it. Outlaw it
here and China'll do it. Outlaw it there and Russia will. Outlaw it there and
somebody will buy an aircraft carrier and pay to do this in international
waters. It will happen eventually. Might as well enable it and provide ethical
guidance as opposed to banning it and letting someone else do it covertly and
with no oversight or considerations of ethical ramifications.

~~~
sqrt17
Sorry, but the "science marches on" bit is bullshit. There's a difference
between Russia and China having the atomic bomb and your friendly
neighbourhood drug mafia having one.

It also makes a difference whether China gets a bad rapping for pumping
political prisoners full of anticoagulants before shooting them so that they
can serve as organ donors, after the execution, or whether they can do that in
the full conscience that such things are considered desirable and normal.

If a technology has only criminal uses, it is commonly accepted that research
into it is not worthwile. Think of all the exciting ways to build new
explosives that are more suitable for suicide bombers, or of all the new and
exciting ways of taking planes off the sky with a store-bought laser pointer.
These must surely be things that science will pass through eventually, but I
doubt anyone will be encouraged or funded to do so.

~~~
fractallyte
Conversely, when embryonic stem cell research was crippled in the US in 2006,
South Korea (and others) leapt ahead... China, for instance, has no
legislation prohibiting such research - the ethics are judged quite
differently in other economic (and even religious) cultures.

------
robbiep
To all those commenting as though this will be happening next year or next
month, the realistic view is that until we have the technology to restore
function in a quadriplegic we will not be performing head transplants anytime
soon.

A project outline is just a project outline- only a step up from a napkin
doodle. I have actually sat down with friends of mine over a dozen scotches
and made 'project outlines' that involve wiring up circulatory systems to a
redundant twin, or a immuno-naive xenograft (read: pig). Came up with some
hilarious medical chat regarding the procedure. Whilst it's all well and good
to talk about the surgical procedures that would be required and the drugs and
machines you could use during different parts of a procedure there's a long
way from chat to implementation. Not to say that some human centipede stuff
isn't possible given the right twisted individual and correct resources and
time

~~~
StavrosK
What's hard about connecting spines? Is it that the nerves don't "match up"?

~~~
robbiep
It's been mentioned elsewhere but neuroplasticity means it doesn't matter
about 'matching up'. The problem is making the connections stick and regrow.
At the moment we can't do this with the spinal cord. Peripheral nervous system
nerves regrow if they are lined up correctly, although the fastest speed they
will regrow at is 1mm per day. even if you could get central nervous system
nerves to regrow like this you are looking at around 4 years for the average
person to regrow the nerve to move their big toe (around 1500mm from base of
spine to toe). Then you need to ensure that the sensory nerve roots, which
have their nerve bodies in the dorsal root ganglion of the spinal cord, will
grow up to the brain and integrate in the brainstem with the ascending 'last
leg' nerves.

Other people are talking about glues and other substances that may speed this
up (ie instead of requiring a nerve to regrow it could just attach to the
other side and start working, like having a set of ethernet cables from the
brain and just plugging them into the other side) however they are all just as
experimental as the general concept of removing and replacing a head as far as
I can tell

~~~
StavrosK
That's very informative, thank you.

------
Pitarou
I foresee a future dominated by wealthy, semi-senile "immortals" in virile,
muscular young vat-grown bodies.

At least, I _hope_ they're vat-grown.

~~~
redthrowaway
Plenty of people die from traumatic head injuries leaving otherwise healthy
bodies. There's lots of potential donors.

Even with new bodies, however, aging takes quite the toll on the brain. Fixing
that would likely fix the need for body transplants, and not fixing it would
make more than a single transplant a depressing prospect.

The clearest use for this technique, were it ever viable, would be just what
the article stated: the treatment of otherwise terminal illnesses (or, for
that matter, massive body trauma).

~~~
prawn
Arrange in advance to donate your healthy body at the time of your death to
someone in exchange for money going towards the future of your family. A form
of life insurance.

~~~
Pitarou
I don't intend to die with a healthy body.

~~~
indiv0
Most people with healthy bodies don't intend to die, and yet life insurance is
prevalent.

------
jzwinck
The paper envisions post-op reproduction as possible: "The chimera would carry
the mind of the recipient but, should he or she reproduce, the offspring would
carry the genetic inheritance of the donor."

If the head and the body came from citizens of two different countries, what
citizenship would the child have, presuming it is born in a land where
citizenship flows from that one parent?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Assuming a rational legal decision, as opposed to a pitchforks-and-torches
one, I think that legal identity would have to be attached to the mind rather
than the body. If the body currently belongs to a recognized citizen, then
offspring of the body should be treated as offspring of the citizen,
regardless of who may have previously owned it.

------
arm55
I'm glad that there are people out there thinking about these things. I've
witnessed first hand some pretty amazing limb functionality improvements
through nerve repair and definitely understand his confidence in that realm.
However, I can't think of a scenario in which testing this really could be
justified. The one that comes to mind first, of course, is a quadriplegic. But
really, we'd be putting a real person through an incredibly traumatic
procedure with a high likelihood of fatality for a chance at motility. I don't
think there'd be much support for that.

~~~
underlines
What if a conscious person 100% agrees to donating him/herself as a subject
for such a test (as a Reciever)? What if the bodies come from brain-dead
patients who have fully admitted to donating their bodies (As a donor)?

I see no problem here if all involved persons accept to the procedure. And yes
there will always be shady circumstances, but we also have that today with
life-insurances, faked deaths, black market organ trade etc.

Why not just ask people? Why do we always have to talk 100 years about it
being ethically OK, when there are people that WANT to be volunteers.

------
dmitrygr
This may be the coolest thing i've ever read. It also reminds me of an old
Russian science fiction book "Professor Dowell's Head" a little

------
benatkin
Shouldn't it be called _body transplantation?_

------
Cthulhu_
If it's a human head on some other human's body, I wonder what the
psychological effects will be; IIRC, limbs have been transplanted before, and
in some cases they were removed again because the recipient rejected it
mentally - that's not my arm.

------
joe_the_user
The obvious crazy-sci-fi use of this is transplanting an older head/brain into
a younger, cloned body.

While this would only happen many years in the future, if at all, to say this
raises ethical issues is a serious understatement.

~~~
sqrt17
The other obvious crazy-sci-fi scenario would be a young person who survives a
massive organ failure by getting their head grafted onto a 70-year-old donor's
body. That sounds pretty intense as a topic for a novel.

------
mkempe
Part of the plot in dystopic This Perfect Day, by Ira Levine.

Heinlein had an interesting twist in I Will Fear No Evil -- old billionaire
male gets brain transplanted into body of a young female.

------
fuzzythinker
A new way for sex change coming? The ability to do the almost impossible
adam's apple change, along with the body in a single step.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The Adam's apple is actually really easy--google "tracheal shave." The visible
bump is just cartilage; shaving it down is an outpatient surgery, and the scar
is virtually invisible after a couple of months.

But yeah, I also thought of transgender applications. Hmm... I'm not sure if
the logistics work if we're getting the bodies from head-trauma victims. For
one thing, they'll probably go to saving lives first. Even if there's no
immediate need and the body won't keep, can you imagine that conversation?
"Yes, we have an eligible female body on ice and waiting for you. Be at the
hospital in an hour, and plan to spend the next year or four in recovery. Hope
you've got really great insurance."

But if we get to the point where donor bodies can be cloned from the patient's
DNA and grown _in vitro,_ it should be feasible to flip that one chromosome.
That would be a hell of a thing.

------
nsxwolf
It's a body transplant.

