Are head transplants realistic?

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0639wx4

They're possible, but impractical. What they really are is body transplants to keep the head alive. Even then, the result is an immobilized head on an inanimate body, much like the result of a severed spinal cord in the neck - paralysis from the neck down.

It would be the most complex surgery ever attempted.

Medicine is not capable of delivering a meaningful result.

Unless and until severed spinal cords can be connected, the transplant is a waste of resources imo.

We don't like it, but some people are fated to die.

The least he could do is try IMO. If both the body and brain are going to be dead then there's no point in not trying.

There has been work reconnecting severed spinal cords with sheeting neural tissue from the nose.

The good doctor enthusiastically discusses his approach as a practical means of "immortality" by which I took him to mean very long life extension by repeated body transplant. The effect of a full supply of compatible young blood on an old head would be interesting to observe, but the doctor's ideas pose ethical challenges.

Were such life extension available to the rich and powerful today, what means might be devised to secure a supply of full body donors?

What might a person like Mugabe or even Trump do to secure practical immortality?

"You have a rare gift--a very special blood type! You have been selected to serve the people's republic with a unique and special sacrifice. Your family will be well taken care of by a grateful nation. You will be remembered as a hero. Nurse, prep this man for the procedure."

Sort of like Cherryh's Qhal in the Morgaine books (or Stargate, if you only know the derivative material)

By the time this is possible, I presume the "body" would be a cloned, younger version of the person with more of a "brain transplant" rather than a "head transplant" happening.

You could go all Sixth Day on this and say you make a clone and move the consciousness over to the new body, but you'd have the metaphysical debate on if (1) there is a "consciousness" to living beings and (2) are you actually "cut and paste" or "copy and paste?" The first would ensure you have immortality. The second means you die, but your clone continues on believing it is you.

I think you could do a sort of vampire restoration now by pumping out an old persons blood and pumping in replacement young blood. While the experimental evidence suggests this would improve cognitive function, self repair, etc, I think you would have a problem with blood production in the old marrow, so periodic refresher transfusions would be necessary.
Young blood for old bodies

This existing, experimentally proven technology exists today and poses some of the same ethical challenges. One can imagine the measures the rich, powerful and ethically challenged might go to to secure a supply of revitalizing young blood...

It might make a good story, anyway.

Go a step further.

There's a gland in the chest that's huge in infants but gone in adults. It's credited for the rapid rate of cellular generation/regeneration associated with growth and maturity. If we could find a way to prevent it from atrophying as we mature, we'd essentially be immortal absent serious disease or injury.

It's called the "Thymus".

The thymus continues to grow between birth and puberty and then begins to atrophy; this thymic involution is directed by the high levels of circulating hormones. Proportional to thymic size, thymic activity (T-cell output) is most active before puberty. Upon atrophy, the size and activity are dramatically reduced, and the organ is primarily replaced with fat (a phenomenon known as "organ involution"). The atrophy is due to the increased circulating level of sex hormones, and chemical or physical castration of an adult results in the thymus increasing in size and activity. Patients with the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis commonly (70%) are found to have thymic hyperplasia or malignancy.

Thus, the only way to prevent the atrophy is to prevent puberty. This might result in a longer life (but not immortality), and eliminate the individual's reproductive capability, and possibly cause the immune system to attack the body.

Please no.

Although most of the people in the world are not evil, we could have tyrants living forever with something like that.

Could you imagine someone like Stalin living for 500 years? Shudder.

A number of Neuro/Cognitive/Computer Scientists are trying to find a way to 'upload' the contents of the brain into a computer, so that a 'person' could 'exist' inside a computer and control a robot body. Immortality??? Possible???

or bullshyte?

Completely in the realm of post-digestion bull feed.

Until they have a few clues about how human consciousness works, they can't hope to copy it anywhere.

I disagree in part.

The thought was that in a short while, computer chips would be advanced enough that it would be possible to "map" the human brain.

The presenter who stated this (back in 2000) did stop and said that while this would make it feasible for a computer to think like the person it was mapped after, it was not a commentary on if such a computer would become "sentient" as a result or if it was some kind of "immortality" for the person mapped.

If a computer has the processing power to copy a process and run it, knowing HOW it works might not be relevant...except that any malfunction could not be fixed because you don't know where the coding is going wrong.

This would be like being able to clone healthy tissue but not genetically repair it if the clone sample starts having genetic problems because copying (by comparison) is easy, but knowing how to fix a "process level" genetic error requires understanding of DNA that's much more advanced than what's needed to make a clone of living tissue.

But this is like saying that in a while automobiles could be advanced enough that it would be possible to map the human brain. There is nothing about advances in computer technology that equates to understanding of neurobiology (though improvements in scanning technology and data storage help other investigative processes)

The main thing is that to speculate about how a computer might copy and run a process when you don't know what the process is or how it works makes little sense. What are you copying?

Would that be neurotransmitter levels? Synaptic activity? Gut-brain interactions? Glandular activity? Peripheral Nervous system feedback? Cerebellar function? Pons activity? Hippocampal activity? The primary motor cortex? Broca's area? Wernicke's area? Semantic memory? Episodic Memory? Implicit Memory? Working Memory?

It seems like there is a certain amount of handwaving going on when people say we will be able to do this soon--as if the question of how can be magically answered by the complexity of the computing system. There is no reason to believe that a high degree of complexity or speed in computing systems will reveal anything about how the mind works.

Sounds highly risky. But if people want to risk it they could get a whole new life. It might be worth the risk for some.