Head Transplant

[Albadross]

I searched but surprisingly I couldn't find a thread on this - forgive me if the app has just lied to me...

So some Italian surgeon plans to do a head transplant. Apparently it's not a joke.

news.sky.com/story/1501109/head-transplant-patient-were-making-science

Won't this change everything we know about disability, what makes us who we are, and just about anything else ever?!

How will DNA be affected? Will the result be a body that might reject it's own head at any moment?

I realise it probably won't work, and as much as I believe in science (science is my religion), we've only just started to accept disability rather than trying to fix it (social model), so there'd be huge implications for those who are disabled and may then be expected to undergo a similar process. Maybe babies born with disabilities will get 'fixed'. What if someone's disability is progressive and related to the brain - can they opt to start again in a new body to prolong life?

Most experiments/advances I can kind of think yep, see the point of that.

Head transplant? Nope

...it must be a joke

to transplant a head would mean severing the spinal cord which cannot be done

as suggested in the article, an elaborate hoax

Did he say were he was going to get all these for healthy bodies to transplant heads onto?

Gymboy- but why would Sky and all the other news channels cover it and even get 'proper' surgeons on to suggest it might be possible?

I saw the news broadcast, it is a true story, the surgeon even wheeled out (literally) his first volunteer with severe physical disabilities.

The surgeon is an orator as what he was saying in front of his learned colleagues fired up many of the surgeons there, which basically was how many years ago was it they were saying a heart, lung or anything else could be transplanted, but they did it - so he is looking for medical science to seriously challenge itself.

So while correct we do not have currently have the science e.g. reconnect all the nerves running through the spinal cord, he is clearly looking for the expertise and finances, to make it so.

Whose head is the volunteer hoping to get ?

Although I did not pick it up from the broadcast but now giving it further thought, based on his physical disabilities, I'd suggest that he IS the head.

Chilling and working on a healthy (but recently diseased) body ready for a transplanted head, is probably the easy part.

I've been following this for a while, the volunteer is the head, it would be transplanted onto a new body.

I read this in the Daily Mail online the other morning but skim read, which by the time I'd had my second coffee had made me wonder why they were transplanting a guinea pig's head onto a man's body.

Anyway. From what I remember the guy wants to try anything and has accepted he might die - which would have been his next choice without this.

Rumour has it that such experimentation if on a female, will always be driven by the head making the choices.

After this first attempt on a male, all future transplants on men will be driven by the body, as even the medical profession has to admit, somewhere within their lower extremities, is where they tend stow their brains.

A very brave first recipient show this happen in the near future, may his name be recorded alongside the surgeon, rather than just the latter recorded in the history books.