Head transplant carried out on monkey

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frenchmanflats
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29 Jan 2016, 4:28 pm

mr_bigmouth_502,

Animals feel pain too even though they cannot express it.



frenchmanflats
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29 Jan 2016, 4:31 pm

nerdygirl wrote:
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.


Good Point



mr_bigmouth_502
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29 Jan 2016, 6:58 pm

frenchmanflats wrote:
mr_bigmouth_502,

Animals feel pain too even though they cannot express it.

Did you read my post? I was against performing the experiments on non-consenting animals, and for performing them on consenting humans.

Fnord wrote:
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!

Fair point.


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auntblabby
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29 Jan 2016, 7:33 pm

I was under the impression that the guy wouldn't attempt this unless he had already found out the way to get all the right nerve fibers to reunite with all the other right nerve fibers. otherwise the transplanted body would just be a dead weight.



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29 Jan 2016, 7:35 pm

I wonder why nobody has figured out a way to put an otherwise good head on some kind of life support apparatus, to help people whose heads are alright but whose bodies got ruined somehow. johnny cash loved novelty tunes and one pertinent one I can think of, is "the chicken in black"-



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29 Jan 2016, 7:49 pm

auntblabby wrote:
I wonder why nobody has figured out a way to put an otherwise good head on some kind of life support apparatus ...
... like someone else's brain-dead body?

It would be the same situation as a person having their spinal cord severed at the neck. The body would be motionless while it kept the head alive. The person would require assistance to eat, move, bathe, dress, et cetera ... a classic case of quadriplegia.

Although in the case of a body transplant, anti-rejection drugs would have to be administered, as well.

Either way, the person would require 24-hour care.



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29 Jan 2016, 7:55 pm

it would be for somebody über-rich and determined to keep living above all other concerns.



Kraichgauer
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29 Jan 2016, 10:16 pm

How about connecting a disembodied head to a cybernetic body? Think about it - a body that never dies!


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29 Jan 2016, 10:18 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
How about connecting a disembodied head to a cybernetic body? Think about it - a body that never dies!

this reminds me of the gary Larson cartoon about the scientist whose head is on a life support machine, and he wakes up and is disoriented and yells, "HELP! what happened to my body?!" and another scientist slaps him to his senses and he says, "thanks, I needed that."



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29 Jan 2016, 10:31 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
How about connecting a disembodied head to a cybernetic body? Think about it - a body that never dies!
... supporting a brain that is succumbing to dementia.

Again, it's a matter of matching up each nerve path with its appropriate sensor or motor.



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30 Jan 2016, 2:27 am

auntblabby wrote:
Kraichgauer wrote:
How about connecting a disembodied head to a cybernetic body? Think about it - a body that never dies!

this reminds me of the gary Larson cartoon about the scientist whose head is on a life support machine, and he wakes up and is disoriented and yells, "HELP! what happened to my body?!" and another scientist slaps him to his senses and he says, "thanks, I needed that."


:lol:


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