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Russian man volunteers for world's first human head transplant
- Thread starter Starfield
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Sho_Nuff82
Member
This is a scam. If this technology existed he would easily be able to prove it in a mammalian model or a non human primate.
Edit: for those touting the monkey and dog attempts, I really hope you're not discounting the dimentia and premature death.
Edit: for those touting the monkey and dog attempts, I really hope you're not discounting the dimentia and premature death.
PlayALLtheGames
Banned
I'm not a doctor but I have a feeling there is a near 0% chance this works.
Unbound By Death
Member
It will fail but it could help the doctors understand what goes wrong so they can fix it.
Unless the guy that does it is not even a doctor
Unless the guy that does it is not even a doctor
zswordsman
Member
Hopefully they record everything and release it, would be cool to watch an edited version. Hopefully it'll work out, the guy can't really lose anything except his constant misery and at least it'll provide useful info.
whiteninja
Member
Like that X-files movie, except in that it was
(almost anyway)
a male head on a female body
AFAIK most organs are harvested from donors who had brain death, but whose bodies are still kept alive through life support... because without a minimum functional brain the body will die since many vital functions (like breathing) are actually controlled by certain parts of the brain.
The problem with this procedure is that it needs to cut the spinal cord at its "root". If reattachment doesn't happen, the patient will be quadriplegic and be unable to breath without a ventilator. In the volunteer's case, however, that might not be too bad since at least his new body's heart will still be beating... but then there is the whole rejection problem. If the body begins rejecting the head, the results will be catastrophic.
E-Cat
Member
So... the guy has now "successfully" done a transplant on a monkey's head:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...osurgeon-sergio-canavero-claims-a6822361.html
However, this wording strikes me as peculiar:
Will the human subject have to be terminated in the end for similar 'humanitarian reasons'?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...osurgeon-sergio-canavero-claims-a6822361.html
However, this wording strikes me as peculiar:
Will the human subject have to be terminated in the end for similar 'humanitarian reasons'?
NoblesseOblige
Banned
The butt. The soul is in the butt.
Edit: Just realized I was responding to a month old comment.
AlteredBeast
Fork 'em, Sparky!
That or the touted results were actually bullshit/inconclusive at best.
Japanmanx3
Member
Shivering even thinking about it.
I suspect we'll have robot bodies before this becomes viable.
CrunchyFrog
Member
While possibly true, it does nothing to prove the long-term success of the procedure in dealing with the dozens upon dozens of post-op complications which may occur. Case in point, the article notes that the same procedure was already done "successfully" decades earlier but the body rejected the head after 9 days, while this procedure only left the subject alive for 20 hours before terminating it. This guy is still an attention-whoring asshole and in breach of just about every code of medical ethics in existence. If he actually had the ability to repair spinal cords he'd start by simply repairing damaged spinal cords in paraplegics/quadriplegics (something which would actually help MILLIONS of people RIGHT NOW) instead of jumping straight to cutting people's heads clean off (something which even in best case scenarios would only help maybe a few thousand, and that's assuming they could find a fully intact functioning donor body given that just normal single organ donation is crazy hard enough), but that of course wouldn't get him as much venture capital from unwitting dupes who buy into his bullshit and take potential investment away from actual legitimate medical research. Fuck this guy six ways to Sunday, making a mockery of the medical and scientific profession.
Aztechnology
Member
I wish the guy the best. He knows the chances are slim to none, he's just resigned himself to the attempt because he doesn't believe life is worth living in his current state.
CrunchyFrog
Member
He's been lied to by an enterprising businessman who will never actually perform the procedure. If he ever did, it would almost certainly be a complete failure or a pyrrhic enough success as to end his career. This is a ploy to fool people who don't know any better either to fund some other bit of crackpot "research" he's carrying out or buy himself a few new jumbo jets while the fun lasts, and this poor Russian man is an innocent pawn in all of it.
iamaustrian
Member
there was some russian scientist(s?) who transplant "successfully" thr head of a dog afair.
that was decades ago and the dog only lived for a very short time. there is even a supercreepy video available
that was decades ago and the dog only lived for a very short time. there is even a supercreepy video available
"Unethical" to me, probably means the monkey head was on a baby elephant body or something. But it works!
80s Bad Guy
Banned
I can't see this ending well. But damn that guy must be brave.
My father worked in medical technologies, and there are a lot of expensive equipment that makes transplants a lot easier. The article did say 100 surgeons were going to operate. I don't think it's a bullshit claim, I just think it's super expensive. They'd need to have a constant supply of oxygen, and procedures to keep the heart pumping and the body electrified. I personally think it's only a matter of time this procedure becomes a norm - we've advanced considerably, and the "super sharp blade" probably refers to the latest diamond knives where there aren't any irregularities on the scale of nanometres and the very tip is a single atom.
While I think the overall claim of a human head transplant to be bullshit that sentence is pretty standard. Research animals are typically always terminated at the end of the study, partially for humane reasons (even if the procedure was successful the patient would need lifelong treatment to avoid rejection) and partially because they've been used up for research purposes and the job of "monkey research subject" doesn't come with a pension plan.
The claim that he needs "100 surgeons" is actually completely ridiculous. Unless I'm missing something they're going to be working on a single cut across the neck and there's just no way they could have more than one active surgeon working from each side at a time, with two assistants each at most, because of the obvious fact that people take up physical space. The rest of the the team aren't surgeons and a surgical team can work for hours straight at a time, so unless he's planning on rotating them every five minutes he would have to stretch the operation out over more than a week to need that many people.
I don't think this is ever going to work, frankly. The nervous systems of two people are too different and there are just too many potentials for catastrophic rejection.
Edit: you work on both bodies simultaneously during transplants so that's 12 surgeons at at a time, maximum. And that's by choice, not necessity. Anyone who can hold a retractor or a suction tube can work as an assistant, the only reason to have them be surgeons is to use the operation as a learning opportunity for them.
Well, he claims he can "repair" a spinal cord that was cut intentionally and (very) precisely while most paraplegics/quadriplegics had their spinal cords damaged by tearing and/or crushing, not to mention the scarring that develops some time after the injury. Doesn't give his claims much more validity, of course.
T
Transhuman
Unconfirmed Member
I wonder if the body is going to be like super jacked or maybe it'll be a black guy's body or a like a little boy's body and this guy will live an extra 40 years but he'll have like an old guys's face?
Yes
If it requires a precise cut, can't the damaged torn or crushed spinal cord be cut away and the "repaired" ends then connected? (Well, ignoring things like the thing being too short then, perhaps.)
Yeah, there's a lot of questionable things about this "procedure".
Clone yourself.
Let your clone age until it's old enough.
Transplant your head unto his body.
Do this for forever, acquire immortality.
Shit, no one read this post. I'm making this into a 1970s Sci-fi movie.
Borderline? I felt they crossed that line long ago.
FelixOrion
Poet Centuriate
No. Euthanasia of test animals (monkeys, mice, etc.) is common, but human test subjects in science are in a whole other ethics ballpark than non-human animals.
Gully State
Member
Your brain doesn't stop aging...
I don't know enough about it, but I suppose trying to "match" two different points of the cord might be a big hurdle... which would probably also be a problem when dealing with two cords from different bodies.
Yeah. Science claiming that technically it worked because he was wiggling his toes, but forgot to mention other side effects.
I mean fuck, if it all went well wouldn't you want to keep the monkey alive so you can show videos and show the monkey living a normal life?
I'd imagine if the latter is possible, then the former is probably as well.
A's neck is not identical to B's neck no matter how you cut it, after all.
That's what I'm thinking too. If it really was flawless then you'd be parading that monkey around and showing him to everyone. That's what happened to Dolly, which was also a huge ethical thing at the time.
You'd only kill it if you wanted to make your claims hard to verify by destroying the evidence.
Killer Queen
Banned
A weapon to surprass raiden?
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