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If you think AVs and space travel are weird...


Mallette

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...check this out.  Fer cryin' out loud don't shoot the messenger.  I just bring the news.  From geek.com:

 

A team of elite surgeons from around the world will soon be attempting a medical first — a full human head transplant. No, this is not a movie, sci-fi novel, or tragically late April Fools’ prank. This is actually happening, and no one knows if it will work or what it could mean if it does.

 

The patient (read: guinea pig) is a 30-year-old Russian man named Valery Spiridonov. He’s not just doing this for fun, though. Spiridonov has a terminal form of spinal atrophy called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. There’s no known medical treatment that will save his life, except maybe taking his head off and placing it on a different, healthier body.

 

Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero will be in charge of decapitating and re-capitating Spiridonov, following a procedure laid out in a paper published in the journal Surgical Neurology International. The operation is expected to take 36 hours and require 150 medical staff.

 

First, Spiridonov’s head and new body will be cooled to slow the rate of cell decomposition. Then, doctors will hook up all the major blood vessels in the neck to machines that will keep things flowing during the transfer. The spinal cord will then be severed and the head will be moved to the new body for attachment. Canavero plans to use polyethylene glycol injections to get the cells and connective tissues to stick together, binding the head to the new body. After that, it’s simply a matter of connecting blood vessels, muscles, and nerves.

 

Doctors expect it will take up to a year for Spiridonov’s spinal cord to completely fuse with the new body, but that’s far from the only potential complication. No one really knows what switching bodies will do to the brain. The exposure to completely different chemical and electrical signals could drive a man mad. There’s also the possibility the new body will reject Spiridonov’s head, even with powerful anti-rejection drugs.

 

The project will officially launch in June as Canavero begins recruiting staff for the procedure. It could take place as early as next year. If this doesn’t work, there’s always the Futurama-style head in a jar.

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Sounds like he's out of it already, so what the heck?  Certainly at least as good a shot as being cryopreserved.  As to "belief," that's for Sunday's with me.  I see nothing scientifically impossible about this.  I don't think the odds are good it will succeed this time, but odds are science and improve with practice.

 

Certainly the most complex conceivable surgery but it's been decades since the first heart transplant and that was proclaimed "impossible" before it was tried.   Many didn't make it...then one did.  Then more.

 

Dave

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Getting the nerves, bloodvessel, and muscles reconnected is also a difficult stage.  They have re-attached limbs and have had good functional outcomes.  The success rate and longevity for him will be poor like most pioneering surgery.  They will learn things to help refine their techniques and treatments.  Who know what the futures holds.

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If "gullible" in this case (and I admit I resemble that remark in this case unless you keep up with fringe science as I enjoy doing) it's because this one isn't new nor is it a matter of "can be done" but when.  First attempt with dogs was in 1908, and the Russians succeeded in the same attempt somewhat more completely in 1959.  The reason I didn't suspect this one is that geek.com, while reporting some "edge" stuff, usually isn't the subject of a Snopes debunk.  I suspect they didn't suspect for the same reasons I did not.  Dr. Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group announced that such a transplant would be viable by 2017 back in 2013, and he is not a nut.  However, he is likely wrong about it being fully functional.  It's been stated by many that such a transplant is quite doable for a quadriplegic whose organs are failing, but they would remain quadriplegic as technology isn't ready to reattach the spinal nerves.  Canavero claims he has developed a way, but hasn't demonstrated it and there is widespread skepticism.

 

However, there is no general skepticism in advanced medicine that such a transplant is impossible or even that far in the future.

 

Dave

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BTW, Bruce.  I already have "beachfront property" in Arkansas.  Our old house in Texarkana sits right on the shoreline...of course, that was in the Eocene some 50 million years ago but I hear the tide may be about to come in.  Beachfront ran from Texarkana through Little Rock to Memphis.

 

Dave

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Next thing you know, head transplant patients will be pining for equal rights too.  I can't keep up with the current ever changing demographic population as it is.  What will determine the age/gender/nationality/etc,  of the end result of these surgeries?  The head or the torso.  What about a straight head on a trans gender torso?  The census bureau is going to need a new form.

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The very thought of this doesn't seem right on so many different levels....just downright weird.

 

Rationally, how would it differ from any other organ transplant? 

 

Dave

 

 

I wouldn't categorize your head as an organ for one.  It's much more complex than any single organ as well. 

 

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the whole concept as well. :wacko:

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Would you be good with it if it were just the brain?  That is an organ. 

 

If you have a body that is viable and a person with a viable head whose body isn't viable it would strike me as a violation of the Hippocratic oath not to attempt to preserve life. 

 

Dave

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