Head transplant carried out on monkey

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auntblabby
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29 Jan 2016, 12:39 am

Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
I wonder how many more decades it will take for them to make this work?

Hopefully never. This procedure is basically right out of Shelley's Frankenstein and is terrible path to go down.

as an organ donor, if my head should somehow bite it but the rest of my body be intact, I'd have no qualms over letting somebody else get use out of my body with their head.

That's a good, valid argument, but we're talking human behaviour. How long after this breakthrough before body harvesting happens on healthy people?

inevitable. it already happens with people being nabbed and eviscerated for their organs. can't put anything past organized crime. but the genie is already out of the bottle, can't stuff it back in, it will refuse to go back in.



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29 Jan 2016, 12:51 am

auntblabby wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
I wonder how many more decades it will take for them to make this work?

Hopefully never. This procedure is basically right out of Shelley's Frankenstein and is terrible path to go down.

as an organ donor, if my head should somehow bite it but the rest of my body be intact, I'd have no qualms over letting somebody else get use out of my body with their head.

That's a good, valid argument, but we're talking human behaviour. How long after this breakthrough before body harvesting happens on healthy people?

inevitable. it already happens with people being nabbed and eviscerated for their organs. can't put anything past organized crime. but the genie is already out of the bottle, can't stuff it back in, it will refuse to go back in.


Does that really happen? I thought that was just urban myth.


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Aristophanes
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29 Jan 2016, 12:53 am

auntblabby wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
I wonder how many more decades it will take for them to make this work?

Hopefully never. This procedure is basically right out of Shelley's Frankenstein and is terrible path to go down.

as an organ donor, if my head should somehow bite it but the rest of my body be intact, I'd have no qualms over letting somebody else get use out of my body with their head.

That's a good, valid argument, but we're talking human behaviour. How long after this breakthrough before body harvesting happens on healthy people?

inevitable. it already happens with people being nabbed and eviscerated for their organs. can't put anything past organized crime. but the genie is already out of the bottle, can't stuff it back in, it will refuse to go back in.

That doesn't mean we need to double down on the behaviour. Second point: if your body dies that means it's your time, plain and simple. Cheating death only cheapens life.



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29 Jan 2016, 3:19 am

Image

I'm reminded of the X Files movie. Stuff of nightmares.



ZD
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29 Jan 2016, 3:56 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
Does that really happen? I thought that was just urban myth.


China does it.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_har ... s_in_China


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auntblabby
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29 Jan 2016, 4:04 am

I'm reminded of that organ harvesting scene from "the meaning of life."



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29 Jan 2016, 4:40 am

This an absolute perversion of science, animal cruelty and ethics. Its something Dr. Josef Mengele would do. The University the person is associated with should seriously look into the activities of this person. They should yank this persons funding.



mr_bigmouth_502
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29 Jan 2016, 4:55 am

frenchmanflats wrote:
This an absolute perversion of science, animal cruelty and ethics. Its something Dr. Josef Mengele would do. Ultimately, they are going to be doing this to humans. They should yank this persons funding.

I'd almost say it would be better to do it with consenting human subjects than with animals who have no idea what the hell is going on. Ultimately, this is supposed to further HUMAN medical science, so why are we wasting time with defenseless animals? Now, some would say that this is even LESS ethical, but like I mentioned earlier, at least humans can give proper consent. And they will; just look at all the people willing to go through risky drug trials and other medical experiments all for the promise of being paid.


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29 Jan 2016, 4:56 am

Fnord wrote:
TWO monkeys died - the donor and the recipient. What they ended up with was a dead monkey head attached to a dead monkey body that the head wasn't born with; a dead, severed monkey head; and a dead, headless monkey body.


not counting the many others that never woke, thus no press release. abhorrent.


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frenchmanflats
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29 Jan 2016, 5:08 am

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
frenchmanflats wrote:
This an absolute perversion of science, animal cruelty and ethics. Its something Dr. Josef Mengele would do. Ultimately, they are going to be doing this to humans. They should yank this persons funding.

I'd almost say it would be better to do it with consenting human subjects than with animals who have no idea what the hell is going on. Ultimately, this is supposed to further HUMAN medical science, so why are we wasting time with defenseless animals? Now, some would say that this is even LESS ethical, but like I mentioned earlier, at least humans can give proper consent. And they will; just look at all the people willing to go through risky drug trials and other medical experiments all for the promise of being paid.



It still grotesque,ghoulish and serves no scientific value. I wonder who approved this "procedure".



mr_bigmouth_502
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29 Jan 2016, 5:48 am

frenchmanflats wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
frenchmanflats wrote:
This an absolute perversion of science, animal cruelty and ethics. Its something Dr. Josef Mengele would do. Ultimately, they are going to be doing this to humans. They should yank this persons funding.

I'd almost say it would be better to do it with consenting human subjects than with animals who have no idea what the hell is going on. Ultimately, this is supposed to further HUMAN medical science, so why are we wasting time with defenseless animals? Now, some would say that this is even LESS ethical, but like I mentioned earlier, at least humans can give proper consent. And they will; just look at all the people willing to go through risky drug trials and other medical experiments all for the promise of being paid.



It still grotesque,ghoulish and serves no scientific value. I wonder who approved this "procedure".

Performed on non-consenting non-human animals it wouldn't. Consenting humans however? It could very well revolutionize medicine. Of course, we first have ti figure out how to patch nerves together in order to get it all to work. From what I can gather it's not nearly as easy as say splicing electrical cables...

Speaking of which, if nerves carry electrical impulses, why not try connecting them with electrically conductive wires? Palladium or titanium should do the trick, they're fairly safe and non-reactive.


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29 Jan 2016, 6:13 am

I don't even understand why this is considered a potentially good thing at all.
Our minds and bodies are so strongly connected. Talk about problems with proprioception!
How is a new head/body combination possibly going to know how to work with each other?
Reattaching nerves and spinal chord healing are one thing.
INTERPRETING the signals sent by those nerves is quite another!
My body is *my body*.
My head is used to the fact that my legs aren't completely straight and that my hips go out of alignment. I've been dealing with this all my life. Put my body with a new head, and that new head isn't going to know a damn thing about it. This is just one example of how our heads and bodies interact.
I think anyone who got this done would be paralyzed, just like the monkey, or at least have severe mobility problems. And not just because of problems with reattaching the spinal chord.
I also think a person could go crazy, not knowing what various signals within the new body MEAN.
It would also be interesting to find out where the source of over- or under-reacting to pain comes from. Does that start in the mind or the body? Can you imagine if you took a head from someone who is under-sensitive to pain and put it on a body that is over-sensitive to pain?
It's hard enough for people to learn to walk with prostethic legs, or to learn how to walk again after a temporary paralysis.
Imagine trying to learn how to work a WHOLE NEW BODY.

This whole thing is unethical and pretty stupid, IMO.



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29 Jan 2016, 7:46 am

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:
... we first have ti figure out how to patch nerves together in order to get it all to work. From what I can gather it's not nearly as easy as say splicing electrical cables...

Speaking of which, if nerves carry electrical impulses, why not try connecting them with electrically conductive wires? Palladium or titanium should do the trick, they're fairly safe and non-reactive.
The main problem is one of complexity: separating the sensory nerves from the motor nerves in both the body and the brain, and then determing which nerve goes to which part of the body or the brain. There are literally millions of nerve paths in the spinal cord, and they may not be arranged the same way in any two people. Add in the fact that the splicing must take place through a microscope, and the patient may die of old age before enough connections are made to let him take a dump and wipe himself unassisted!


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29 Jan 2016, 9:38 am

Fnord wrote:
This has been going on for decades, at least. The goal is to remove a diseased or deformed body from a healthy head


The French invented a machine for doing this in the late 18th century, and were quite fond of using for a purpose opposite to the one above.

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29 Jan 2016, 12:32 pm

ZD wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
Does that really happen? I thought that was just urban myth.


China does it.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_har ... s_in_China


All the more reason to avoid going to China.


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29 Jan 2016, 12:33 pm

auntblabby wrote:
I'm reminded of that organ harvesting scene from "the meaning of life."


One of Monty Python's best. :D


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