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First human head transplant could happen in two years

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Ray Wonder

Founder of the Wounded Tagless Children
Sounds like some Orochimaru shit. I feel like the news stories may have some weird ass headlines after this is normal.

"Man claims body acted on it's own."

"Skilift "accident" leaves man headless."
 

Tom Nook

Member
One step closer to...

robocop-008.jpg
 

Kickz

Member
Skeptical on the Spinal fusion.. last I checked we still got paraplegics around resulting from mangled spines.
 

RobotVM

Member
This is very interesting, but if they can do this I wonder if they can help people who can't walk use the same chemicals to get some function back.
 

Kickz

Member
Sounds like some Orochimaru shit. I feel like the news stories may have some weird ass headlines after this is normal.

"Man claims body acted on it's own."

"Skilift "accident" leaves man headless."


"Teens in orphanages disappearing"

"Organ donation made mandatory"

"Mass graves of only human heads"
 

Captain Pants

Killed by a goddamned Dredgeling
How likely is it that you'd be able to find a full body donor? It seems like most dead people aren't just perfect specimens where you could just swap a head out for another.
 
Whatever. When you think about it the main functions of the body are basically as a life-support system, if you have (or could ethically have) some spare bodies laying around why not use them.
 

Robotguy

Member
The recipient's head is then moved onto the donor body and the two ends of the spinal cord – which resemble two densely packed bundles of spaghetti – are fused together. To achieve this, Canavero intends to flush the area with a chemical called polyethylene glycol, and follow up with several hours of injections of the same stuff. Just like hot water makes dry spaghetti stick together, polyethylene glycol encourages the fat in cell membranes to mesh.

And we make sure the correct nerves join together how?
 

Damaniel

Banned
Skeptical on the Spinal fusion.. last I checked we still got paraplegics around resulting from mangled spines.

Exactly. There's no way that the procedure for fusing the spine would be as easy as is being suggested, otherwise we'd have the ability to repair spines in people who only consist of a single person's worth of head and body.

Sure, this all sounds creepy as fuck, but there's no way we'll be able to do this successfully in two years. I doubt we'll be able to do it in 20. Most people would question whether we should be doing it at all - I'm far more open on the idea, but I'll gladly admit that the ethics questions raised by this are serious and numerous.
 
Exactly. There's no way that the procedure for fusing the spine would be as easy as is being suggested, otherwise we'd have the ability to repair spines in people who only consist of a single person's worth of head and body.

Sure, this all sounds creepy as fuck, but there's no way we'll be able to do this successfully in two years. I doubt we'll be able to do it in 20. Most people would question whether we should be doing it at all - I'm far more open on the idea, but I'll gladly admit that the ethics questions raised by this are serious and numerous.

Well this was done recently, so while it isn't as simple as it sounds here, I think in 20 years we will be much farther along in spinal cord repair.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29645760

It's a really fascinating field of study.
 

Geist-

Member
First off, I'm pretty sure there's a catch here, and probably not a small amount of bad science, but if true... this is fucking awesome. Combine this with cloning and not only will we vastly increase the lifespan of the average human, but people can change how they look too.

And if it works across sexes, I imagine a lot of transgender people will finally be able to have the bodies they've always wanted.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
As soon as they find Ted Williams' head, he's back in business.
 
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