Science Head Transplant!

[Tom]

Just saw this article!

Heads Up! Human Head Transplant in the Works
Feb 26, 2015 11:59 AM ET // by Lori Cuthbert

An Italian doctor is moving forward with plans to transplant a human head to another body, reported New Scientist.

Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, told New Scientist that he will announce his project officially in June at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons’ annual meeting.

Personally - I could use a NEW BODY!

 

[Tom]

Makes me think of the movie Mars Attacks when the aliens transplant the head to a dog...LOL

 

[Kevin]

If it is successful, and "successful" in the sense that the person isn't paralyzed from the neck down, it'll be a ground-breaking achievement in medicine.

 

[Edgar J Hoover]

yes thats the tricky bit, how to rejoin the spinal cord and get it working. Pretty impossible, its like trying to splice the ends of a 10,000 pair telephone cable together with less than 100 errors. Im a technical optimist, i think most things science fiction can think of will be achieved, but that ranks pretty low even on my achievability list.

 

[Tom]

10,000 pair phone cables could be spliced with no errors. It all depends upon what/who is doing the splicing.
It takes time and dilligence with dedication to the task at hand. Can it be done? I think so. Will there be enough time to do it? That is the question.

 

[Edgar J Hoover]

Well when i was 13 i fell through a glass window and severed the radial and ulnar nerves. It took a surgeon 6 hour to stitch it all back together, which includes sewing the nerves back together. 50 years later, i have a large patch on the lower edge of the thumb and adjacent two fingers still mostly numb. On a scale of difficulty, it was 1% as difficult as reattaching the severed spinal cord.