We have a Ship of Theseus problem here.
Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING
Italian scientists claim they have invented a method for carrying out a head transplant - a discovery that could prove life-changing for patients suffering from hitherto incurable diseases. Boffins at the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group claim to have devised a new way to connect the brain to the spinal column. The …
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 19:36 GMT dssf
Re: I'll make the obvious comment.
LOL... Reminds me of what I used to hear Marines say to us Sailors way back when, during PT:
"No pain, no gain."
But, someone replied, to dissuade excessive incurred pain:
"No brain, no pain."
Sailors late on return to the ship (UA, Unauthorized Absentee) would be admonished to "think with their other head, the one on the top of their shoulders"...
SO, that has me thinking: For a below-the-neck pentapalegic male (yes, that 5th limb), getting a new body means being able to use his head (the one on his shoulder) to possible new dimensions, but, hopefully not to new dementias...
I wonder whether the team doing the first procedure will, in unison, hail, "EEEETSSS SAA LYYYVE! EEEETSSS SAAA LYYYYVVVVEEEE!"
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 19:42 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: How to get ahead, errr a head
" True, and I imagine they'll be eyeing up Death Row in certain parts of the world as a ready source of donors. Yuck. "
Don't need'em, just clone a headless version of yourself, and good to go! Of course, it'll be an adult head on an infant body, but you'll grow up, again.
Headless clones:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138483,00.html
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 13:17 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: Spinal repairs
iirc when communication between the brain and body is severed you end up with a significantly shorter lifespan for many reasons. It's great they are looking at this as many people, even with the ability to repair spinal cord damage (which we don't realistically have as a surgical option yet) will not help everyone. At least now, when our ability to fully repair cord damage becomes an option we will have the rest of the knowledge we need to help people.
It's tempting to poke holes, it's easy to do so, but we have so much we don't know and work like this, however impractical it may seem, is very important as it forms part of a bigger picture and as we slowly fill in the gaps we begin to be able to beat previously insurmountable problems. I remember talking with professors at college maybe 15 years ago and they were sure we couldn't beat AIDS or Diabetes. As it stands we are damn close to a practical cure for AIDS, we have a workable treatment for AIDS and we can actually cure type 2 Diabetes. I'm sure my grandkids will laugh at how primitive things were in 'our day', but it's very reassuring to know we have people batshit crazy enough to take on something as potentially unpopular and possibly career ending as head transplants, yet talented enough to make progress. How many of our soldiers who fell victims of ied's could use this treatment?
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Friday 12th July 2013 06:48 GMT AndrueC
Re: So many possibilities
But... before the operation I was a man!
Not a bad book really. A bit saucy in places and the ending is slightly bizarre but worth a read.
Update: "The story takes place about 2015 AD". Wow. I didn't realise that. Adds a new poignancy to this article.
Damn. My copy doesn't have this saucy cover.. I missed all the good covers when I was a teenager.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 10:00 GMT Ralph B
Richard Herring's Ideal Woman
This news has no relevance to young Richard Herring:
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 10:46 GMT Omgwtfbbqtime
"We can't currently repair damaged nerves in humans"
Seems like this may be a way to do it?
Really sharp knife, short length of nerve from a donor (or elsewhere in the body - like skin for a skin graft) and glue in (for want of a better description) a bypass round the damaged nerve.
IANAS(urgeon) but it seems like IF the body transplant can work, then a nerve repair SHOULD be a much simpler technique.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 11:23 GMT Goldmember
Re: Is it April 1st?
Even if nerve repair isn't possible, there are still uses for this. I watched a documentary on Robert White's experiments a few years ago (very interesting by the way, and it even showed a video of the monkey waking up with a new body, albeit completely paralysed). One application brought up in the documentary was the scenario of a paraplegic whose brain was still intact and functional, but whose body was failing. The could be given the body of a brain dead person and go on living.
If nothing else, it is another sky fairy myth-dispelling tool, proving that 'souls', which many religions die when the head is removed, are non-existent.
Minor article correction by the way; the idea wasn't to keep both monkeys alive. One was always going to be killed and be the body 'donor' for the other one, which is part of the reason the experiment was so controversial, and practically ruined Robert White's career.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 12:28 GMT NumptyScrub
Re: Is it April 1st?
quote: "We can't currently repair damaged nerves in humans. It would a Nobel prize level achievement if you worked out how to do it. So head transplants are just nonsense."
From the article: "Last month, researchers at Cleveland University managed to heal rats with broken spines, allowing them to control their bladders once again. The doctors successfully encouraged nerves to grow between two fractured sections of spine."
Dunno about you, but that sounds like being able to encourage the growth of nerve tissue between 2 sections of spine in a human is potentially acheivable to me. For head transplants, you just have the tissue rejection issue inherent in all transplants, and also the issue that you cannot guarantee that nerves are going to reconnect in the right places. Do human spines really have identically placed nerve clusters so that your brain impulses that used to control your left arm, will still control your left arm post-transplant?
Sadly I do not think this will be the case, and that you'll end up thrashing like a newborn until you relearn how to send the correct messages to your new body parts. Assuming that you can get the heart and lung nerves correctly connected, of course... IIRC heart and lung function are usually considered critical for continued function of any body ;)
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 13:28 GMT PatientOne
Re: Is it April 1st?
@NumptyScrub
The brain re-maps the connections making it easier when reconnecting broken nerves or spinal tissue. It learns quite quickly, especially with older people as we know what we're trying to do and what the outcome should be.
you see this a lot with stroke patients (where the brain can re-wire itself) and minor spinal injuries.
So all you need to do is connect the head then maintain heart and lung functions until the brain has those mapped and under control, then wait for the patient to learn how to control their new body. Might take a year or two before the patient can do back flips, but there's still hope.
However, I don't think this is has a practical application due to suitable candidates being few and far between: You'd need a donor who has gone brain dead but who has an otherwise healthy body, and who is not going to be subjected to an autopsy to see how they died, so Big Brother contestants won't qualify...
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 13:49 GMT jubtastic1
Re: thrashing like a newborn
Ah, you're awake Mr... NumptyScrub? I'm pleased to tell you that the operation was a complete success however there will be a period of adjustment while your brain rewires its connections to the new donor body.
To assist you over this period we have implanted a small device which allows you to manually trigger limb movements through the judicious use of this technological marvel, the QWOP keypad.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 14:45 GMT James Micallef
Re: Is it April 1st?
" Assuming that you can get the heart and lung nerves correctly connected, of course... IIRC heart and lung function are usually considered critical for continued function of any body ;)"
Long time since my biology classes, and I may be WAY off the mark here, but... heart, lungs are partially or fully not under conscious control, the signals don't originate in the central nervous system, but in the autonomous nervous system. I think that is partly the brain, partly the spinal cord, so possibly this is not an issue*. Any neurosurgeons on the forum who can comment?
*In any case the article says he's already done this successfully on mammals so shouldn't be a problem
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Thursday 4th July 2013 11:00 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: Is it April 1st?
Head transplants, or more specifically this research, is not nonsense. It is part of a larger field of research. In isolation the research has limited use, but work is progressing in finding answers to all the issues involved with spinal repair and the associated proceedures that would benefit from it. Consider if this research hasn't been done and we did find a method for repairing spinal damage (which even a jaded old cynic like myself believes will happen and within my lifetime), we would then need to do this research anyway.
The days of one smart feller sitting down with a pen and fixing an entire problem are mostly long gone. Most problems are solved by being broken into smaller problems, each being worked on by different researchers. Hopefully they are all sucessful and the cumulative efforts solve several large problems.
This team deserves credit, they took on a project that could have ended their careers just by suggesting they do the research. Hi I want to do head transplants usually sets of the nutter alarms, and we all know how public opinion responds to stuff like this. Not only were they crazy enough to try but it looks like they have figured out an important part of a bigger problem.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 13:15 GMT PatientOne
Re: We can't currently repair damaged nerves in humans.
Yes we can. It's not brilliant but we're improving the technique all the time.
Currently we can restore some, but not all sensation from badly damaged nerves, and we can transplant nerves, and there is ongoing research into the use of stem cells to mend nerve damage. We know stem cells can repair spinal cord damage, and have helped previously paralysed people walk again, and that was from over 5 years ago. The only issue is that most of this research is restricted, and patients have to go private for the treatment.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 11:01 GMT bonkers
Blackadder had a word on this...
Queenie: Oh come now Lady Farrow, crying isn't going to help your husband now.
Nursie: No! Ointment! That's what you need when your head's been cut off! That's what I gave your sister Mary when they done her. "There, there" I said, "you'll soon grow a new one.
Queenie: Shut up Nursie
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 10:10 GMT John Smith 19
It's hard to appreciate just how much advanced research was done in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Implanted neural radio telemetry active brain structure changes. Dr Delgardo (late 50s to early 70s. Still alive).
Head transplants done in both USA and Soviet Union.
1st human incubator 1965.
Cutting edge medical technology but all extremely creepy. the human incubator item really floored me (Life magazine cover). I had thought we were decades away from trying this (and I mean in the future).
Cautious (very cautious) thumbs up.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 13:01 GMT John Smith 19
Re: Prescient much?
"Who's read 'I Will Fear No Evil'..."
Well, after I got past my avoidance of any book that refuses to give any description of the plot.
Very much more "Stranger in a strange land" than "Starship Troopers."
And of course likely to create a new range of
profitsfor the legal fraternity.The downside of this is that it will probably be limited to the very rich.
Balmer could be leading Microsoft into the next Millennium. Trump could still be hosting The Apprentice while on his 50th wife and Branson could be working his way through the stock of jumpers he had made when he bought the entire years supply of the UK wool industry.
Yay. We are truly in an age of excitement.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 14:52 GMT historymaker118
Re: That Hideous Strength
saw the headline came to the comments ctrl-f 'hideous strength'. Yay more people thought exactly the same thing as I did. I love the cosmic trilogy and this has to be one of my favourite books. The whole book is almost prophetic in the way it describes society, this is just an extension of that.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 11:31 GMT Semaj
Shortage
While this clearly falls into the realm of "cool", I don't really see the point.
Surely the only way this would benefit anyone is if they could be given a better body than the one they currently have. But don't people tend to die more often from things damaging their bodies rather than just their heads? Using a heart or a lung, which remained undamaged when the previous owner's been killed in a car crash is one thing but this would need an entire undamaged body. I just can't see them having many to hand.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 19:10 GMT Grave
Re: Shortage
makes you wonder just how far the body modularity goes (and is ultimately even physical brain replaceable, thus making you as a person a virtual entity - and if so, you could live forever, even relive forever, do backups. well live more in a sense of existence, if a terminology of life is tied into biological life).
ghost in a shell, bodies as a remote access equipment, possibilities limitless :)
as for shortage, think out of the box, like for example research into cloning bodies, genetic engineering (making ideal bodies, grown without brain for ethical purposes, etc)
this will have far reaching consequences if it works,
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 12:41 GMT Ken 16
the potential to change the lives of people affected
"the potential to change the lives of people affected by paralysis or other serious mobility-limiting medical conditions"
You mean mobility limiting like having your F**KING head cut off?
I don't see anyone becoming King of France after this treatment.
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Wednesday 3rd July 2013 18:22 GMT Mike Flugennock
They've obviously failed to learn from history
Not only is the Italian team downplaying the ultimate failure of the 1970 monkey-head transplant experiments, but they also obviously haven't viewed this documentary chronicling the disastrous failure of a similar experiment on a human subject in 1962.
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Saturday 6th July 2013 12:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sounds legit
Ages ago I worked out a way to keep a donor brain alive for 12 hours at a time by using weak electrical currents through a circulating chilled conductive salt and glucose solution (potassium/sodium mix) combined with near infrared light from a modified thermal lamp which would keep the neurons alive and functioning.
The head was immersed in a bucket full of the same salt to act as a ground, and the current was reversed
every so often to reduce destructive electrolysis.
The thing which messed it up was the buildup of toxins over time and lack of other important nutrients normally provided by the rest of the body.
Obviously since then the technology has come on quite a bit with heart/lung machines, and you can now buy NIR LEDs tuned to the exact wavelengths needed and they work well when kept at about 3 degrees Celsius by Peltier units.
To reduce the intensity exposing the brain helps, even drilling small holes through the skull for the LEDs or optical fibres would do the trick.
Yours, Baron von Frankenstein.
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