Head transplant

Originally posted by Great King Rat
Why is it against God's will?

It is my opinion.

Originally posted by whodey
If scientist could do such a thing, they would. They would not be swayed by silly objections from religious folk. The thinking would be, let's find out for ourselves.

Men are always drawn to the same apple tree.

I have two degrees in theoretical physics, these days I work as a computer programmer. However, for the purposes of this thread I am a scientist. Further, I am an agnostic. Some people would therefore describe me as an atheist. On the first page of this thread I made a post making a fairly clear statement as to why I thought that the procedure would be unethical. So your claim that no scientists or atheists could possibly object to this procedure on ethical grounds "because it's science and science can't be wrong" is demonstrably false.

Originally posted by RJHinds
It is my opinion.

Why should your alleged god care about that trivial thing when it allowed 100 million people to die in WW2 without so much as an email?

Originally posted by DeepThought
I have two degrees in theoretical physics, these days I work as a computer programmer. However, for the purposes of this thread I am a scientist. Further, I am an agnostic. Some people would therefore describe me as an atheist. On the first page of this thread I made a post making a fairly clear statement as to why I thought that the procedure would ...[text shortened]... dure on ethical grounds "because it's science and science can't be wrong" is demonstrably false.

Anyway, I don't think it will happen in THIS century at all. Maybe not even in the next. Going out on a limb there but it seems to me you have to get the head off and on a new body so quickly to ensure the brain can be brought to life. If you take more than 20 minutes, you will have no brain to work with.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Why should your alleged god care about that trivial thing when it allowed 100 million people to die in WW2 without so much as an email?

Are you sure email was available in WW2? I seem to remember that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. That wasn't in WW2 was it?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Anyway, I don't think it will happen in THIS century at all. Maybe not even in the next. Going out on a limb there but it seems to me you have to get the head off and on a new body so quickly to ensure the brain can be brought to life. If you take more than 20 minutes, you will have no brain to work with.

There was a NASA employee who was testing a space suit in a vacuum chamber I read about. There was a fault in the suit and he lost consciousness, fortunately for him they noticed quickly enough so he was fine. Afterwards he was reported as saying that the last thing he remembered before blacking out was the feeling of the saliva on his tongue boiling off.

From what I've read it's 10 seconds to lose consciousness from the moment the blood supply stops or air becomes unavailable. Irreversible brain damage starts after 3 to 5 minutes. The brain is very bad at coping with anoxia. I'm not sure what the time to death is but by seven minutes the victim's a vegetable. Given a heart lung machine they can cope with that - just add some extra pipes to the carotid artery. What they cannot get round is wiring up the nerves. Unless there are some major breakthroughs in the pipeline the patient is going to be left utterly paralysed and requiring artificial respiration. In combination with the dysmorphia I really think this is a waste of effort. Besides, didn't they do this to some rhesus monkeys years ago - it's old hat!

Yep, just checked, first done on dogs in 1908! The Wikipedia page is worth a look at and makes the excellent point that a donor body used for a head transplant only benefits one patient, when it could benefit 7 or 8 if the organs were donated separately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant