Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage | Hacker News Reader

Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

84 pointstodayiamme84 comments

>In 1970, Robert White and his colleagues successfully transplanted the head of a rhesus monkey on the body of another one, whose head had simultaneously been removed. The monkey lived 8 days and was, by all measures, normal, having suffered no complications.[28]

I would think that living only 8 days would be a "complication"

Given the medical technology available in 1970 and an intent of, "Well, let's see what happens...", the subject's death was assumed and fully expected. Frankly, that the monkey survived 8 days in those circumstances is impressive.

It's impressive, but when I read "no complications" that to me means "walking away pretty much unscathed".

Just odd phrasing, maybe it's common in this sort of research

Perhaps reading the phrase "no complications" with an implicit unexpected in there would make it more palatable?

I would guess that the experiment wouldn't be permitted to prolong the animal's life in such an admittedly abnormal state, since the surgery might be regarded as a form of unusual cruelty in and of itself.

It was probably classified as a "non-survival surgery" and a "painful procedure without the use of pain-relieving drugs", since they would be permitting the monkey to re-awaken and test its senses in a lucid state, after a surgery in which they were uncertain of whether the monkey would live.

An animal protocol like that usually anticipates euthanasia, after the basic science of the experiment has been satisfied. Since the surgery (and subsequent resuscitation) is the experiment, and it's not a longitudinal quality-of-life study, I doubt they planned retaining the monkey much more than a week after surgery.

I agree. That monkey was paralyzed below the point of the spinal cord severing - so the monkey had massive complications and to say there were none is ridiculous. No doctor has even been able to successfully connect the animals' spinal cords with their donor bodies.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/human-head-transplant-is-bad-sci...

8 days of complete terror and pain I imagine.

IIRC that's why they stopped at day 8. The animal was technically functionning but exhibited signs of emotional distress.

Yeah, and "by all measures, normal" was also bullshit, the monkey was paralyzed from the neck down with no spinal connection!

I can't believe we have so little regard for the rights of species very nearly as intelligent and probably equally aware as us. It would be extreme torture to go through a beheading and reattachment with probably little or no anesthesia, and then be forced to live for 8 days in a fucked-up painful & dying state, and no way to escape or even move!

Nowadays there are ethics committees and they would not allow such an experiment, thankfully.

In some places, at least. Wherever capable of performing the experiment, hopefully.

On the other side of the coin, I think people should be allowed to opt-in to such an experiment if they are fully informed and not being financially coerced. E.g., if someone's body is dying and they want their brain to live a little longer, and they need several extra days to finish saying goodbye to their loved ones. But there would need to be a ton of anesthesia and other calming drugs given both during and the entire time after surgery. I don't think that experiments like this should be off the table if needed for progress as a civilization, but I think we can't force very lucid animals into these experiments and not give them anesthesia. The experiment itself isn't necessarily good or bad, but forcing a lucid animal into this even if it expresses fear or wants to flee is wrong.

And this is where it gets dicey.

These experiments are necessary in order to further our understanding of biology we cannot just rule them out as cruel since if we don't do them someone else will.

In China they use political prisoners as involuntary organ donors for gods sake. Hell you can get donor organs within weeks in China while it takes months or even years in other countries just to give you an idea.

So the question is would you rather have countries with less regard for human or animal lives do the experiments and reap its benefits while you stick your head in the sand or would you do the experiments yourself while attempting to treat the creatures in the most humane way possible?

> So the question is would you rather have countries with less regard for human or animal lives do the experiments and reap its benefits while you stick your head in the sand

Worked so far as pollutants are concerned...

Your moral framework appears to give a pass to any activities another person is capable of doing, which doesn't appear to be much of a framework at all.

In particular, it would also logically support any experimentation on live humans which could provide greater understanding than would otherwise be the case. This position was infamously held by wartime goverments in World War II and one I think most reasonable people would reject completely.

A consistent moral framework which requires minimisation of human suffering really has to expand to consider more species capable of suffering.

My moral framework requires consent from human beings as for other creatures i see no problem experimenting with them as log as we put in the best effort possible in reducing their suffering in the process.

And no my framework doesn't give pass to any activities another person is capable of doing it give pass to any activity is necessary in order to advance our understanding and in the future save more lives.

If you're going to qualify all creatures on the same level then we shouldn't be experimenting on lab rats either don't you think?

We shouldn't be killing all those malaria spreading mosquitoes either since their creatures too right?

> My moral framework requires consent from human beings as for other creatures i see no problem experimenting with them as log as we put in the best effort possible in reducing their suffering in the process

Consent is only possible in high-functioning adult humans though. I would expect you would make the concession that 'valid consent' would exclude very young and old humans and the intellectually disabled. But they are no different in this respect to members of other species that can't (or wouldn't if capable) give their consent.

If you see no problem in inflicting suffering on another conscious being that is non-human then why is reducing their suffering even important to you? If it is important, then why isn't it as important as the suffering of a human of reduced intellectual function?

> If you're going to qualify all creatures on the same level then we shouldn't be experimenting on lab rats either don't you think?

Yes, a consistent moral framework would likely agree with this sentiment, assuming consciousness and the ability to suffer is the important consideration.

> We shouldn't be killing all those malaria spreading mosquitoes either since their creatures too right?

Well that is the position of adherents of Jainism [1], but it does really depend on what test of consciousness and capability of suffering you think is necessary to meet, rather than whether something is simply a 'creature'.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism#Non-violence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._White

Dr. Jerry Silver, an expert in regrowing severed nerves, called White's experiments on monkeys, "fairly barbaric."

If they can successfully do this, it raises interesting questions/opportunities to grow a brainless clone of yourself in a vat, then transplant your head from your elderly body onto a fresh new body.

I don't think the transfer will necessarily make your brain young and fresh again, but it might have unexpected positive effects:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9615779/Transfusion-of-you... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130325093659.ht...

There have been experiments that show getting 'young' blood transfused has a rejuvinating effect; might be that works on the brain too to some degree. But for now, there will be limits. Not to mention moral issues - is a clone of you sentient? Can you kill it off in order to preserve your own self?

If it is a brainless clone then it's not sentient. I don't see the moral issue. It's the same as growing a replacement organ, you just grow all of them at once.

> There have been experiments that show getting 'young' blood transfused has a rejuvinating effect

As proven in the seminal paper by Stoker, B

There have been experiments that show getting 'young' blood transfused has a rejuvinating effect

Indeed, those links I supplied in my original comment were to that effect.

moral issues - is a clone of you sentient

Definitely an interesting issue, but one I tried to head off by writing "brainless clone" in my original comment. I guess there would be moral questions about how one could create a clone without a brain. The easiest would be to interfere with the fetus to cause brain death, which does introduce the moral quandary.

Personally, I would say that a clone with its brain intact should be considered it's own person. A clone would essentially be your identical twin, just a different age. It would not be ok to kill off your twin, even if they have a goatee :-)

I understand that your brain isn't designed to last forever either and will eventually give out so what's the point?

My wife's grandmother is still hanging on at 96 and is completely batshit. She's stated that she enjoys this as everything is always new and interesting even if she heard it 30 minutes ago.

Most people die long before their brain gives out. It could extend your life 20+ years so it's definitely worth considering. It also means the only thing we have to worry about is your brain, not a dozen other organs which are now easily expendable.

Arguably, this isn't a "head/spine transplant", it's a "body transplant". Whichever part the brain is in is the important part.

Depends on the person.

Which of the 2?

Made me think of this story:

But Demikhov became even more famous for another crazy transplant experiment: Dog head transplants.

Following a first successful transplant by his colleague Professor A. G. Konevskiy at the Volgograd State Medical University, Demikhov started to regularly exchange heads of dogs.

http://io9.com/5776600/the-story-of-the-giant-dog-headed-rob...

Can anyone here better explain the hand-wavy stuff about re-connecting the spinal cord? I (incorrectly or not) think of the spinal cord as bunch of wires, presumably that have to be connected to the correct counterpart individually. In the article they talk about reconnecting the spinal column in ~2 minutes, which seems to rule that out.

They explained that a few compounds including polyethylene glycol can help glue the nerves together and function (transmit electrical impulses), as they claim, at 10% efficiency. They then state that better compounds exist and that efficiency can also be improved with some other chemicals.

At least so I read it

Yeah I caught that. I'm wondering more about the alignment problem. You wouldn't, for example, just glue a severed bundle of fiber optics back together without reconnecting each strand individually.

Why not? Brains adapt very well. Monkeys given a brain implanted electrodes that control a mechanical arm learned to use it in days. I am pretty sure that with some therapy you could use all your limbs quite well if i swapped the neurons that go to them haphazardly. And it would probably take months, not years of therapy

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

If you connected through a silicon interposer you could use an FPGA or something similar on the silicon to rearrange and possibly even transcode the signals as needed.

Some sort of precise robot similar to a wire-bonding machine could make bonds between nerve ends and pads on the silicon. And then maybe fill the whole area with something solid like epoxy so the bonds don't move or loosen?

In other words, an API?

More like a patch panel.

In theory, nerve connection is quite easy. Put two nerves of the same type right up next to each other and they will fuse and form a continuous signal transduction pathway. However, the success rate for this is somewhere on the order of 80%. Assuming there are ~100 connections to be made, 0.80^100 isn't very enticing. Perhaps using the compounds he talks about can increase the success rate, but this is still on fairly shaky grounds.

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

Actually, if I'm reading wikipedia correctly, there are only 62 connections that need to be made. While that doesn't help with the error rate it seems feasible to make that many connections individually in a short period of time, if that is in fact what they're doing.

> if I'm reading wikipedia correctly, there are only 62 connections

For others, here's the Wikipedia link:

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

I'm surprised that it's so few (31 pairs of spinal nerves). I would have imagined that there would be thousands and thousands of nerves.

Since we certainly have more than 62 sensory inputs and motor outputs in the trunk of our body, I assume that those 62 nerves hide quite a lot complexity.

The spinal nerves (by and large) originate in the spinal cord at their level of origin. That is to say that if you severed the spinal cord at some point, you could not 'split out' the connections corresponding to the lower spinal nerves from the overall bundle. Amongst other things, the spinal cord also contains neurons that form closed circuits without reaching the brain (these make up your reflexes).

So, if you transplanted the head and spinal cord, then use, you could somehow make '62 connections'. If you transplanted 'the head' you would have to join the entire spinal cords.

Finally, each nerve is really 'a cable bundle', so the process of joining them is kinda tricky, and beyond the scope of my knowledge. Needless to say, the authors of the paper think that it can work. Their references likely can point you in the right direction.

0.8 ^ 100 simply means that it's extremely unlikely that there would be 100 out of 100 successful connections given that the probability of the success of each connection is 0.8. The expected success rate would still be around 80 out of 100.

Yes, but even if a few spinal nerves don't get connected, you'll have severe motility problems.

What if it turns out that people can greatly extend their lifespans, or even live forever, by undergoing successive head transplants -- but every time one person gets transplanted, someone else has to die to provide the body?

What if we're headed for a world where the rich and powerful hire body snatchers to kidnap people off the street to provide bodies whenever they need a transplant? What if there are loopholes in the criminal justice system or covert government agencies that will allow people with the right connections to get access to an organized supply of helpless victims?

Scary, but science marches on no matter the possible misuses of it. Outlaw it here and China'll do it. Outlaw it there and Russia will. Outlaw it there and somebody will buy an aircraft carrier and pay to do this in international waters. It will happen eventually. Might as well enable it and provide ethical guidance as opposed to banning it and letting someone else do it covertly and with no oversight or considerations of ethical ramifications.

Sorry, but the "science marches on" bit is bullshit. There's a difference between Russia and China having the atomic bomb and your friendly neighbourhood drug mafia having one.

It also makes a difference whether China gets a bad rapping for pumping political prisoners full of anticoagulants before shooting them so that they can serve as organ donors, after the execution, or whether they can do that in the full conscience that such things are considered desirable and normal.

If a technology has only criminal uses, it is commonly accepted that research into it is not worthwile. Think of all the exciting ways to build new explosives that are more suitable for suicide bombers, or of all the new and exciting ways of taking planes off the sky with a store-bought laser pointer. These must surely be things that science will pass through eventually, but I doubt anyone will be encouraged or funded to do so.

Conversely, when embryonic stem cell research was crippled in the US in 2006, South Korea (and others) leapt ahead... China, for instance, has no legislation prohibiting such research - the ethics are judged quite differently in other economic (and even religious) cultures.

The brain gets old too, you know. :)

Yes, there are many problems at cellular level, e.g. telomerases[1]. I wonder how it would work out if you get an old man's head in a young man's body. I don't think it's going to work. On the other hand, you never know...

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00222836929...

That world already exists for organs in some third world nations. If they can actually perfect this concept, you can be absolutely sure there will be a black market for it.

However I would question whether this technology will be perfected sooner than other forms of regenerative and organ growing medicine that will make it mostly pointless.

Sounds like a good sci-fi plot

This is already happening with organ transplants.

That's the plot outline for Repo Men ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053424/

Unless you could grow clones of your own body in vats that leave a cavity where the brain should be when they grow. More like a meat shell than a person. May be ethical?

Genetically engineered pigs are almost ready for use as sources for organs to be transplanted into humans [1]. It's just one extra step to transplant the head to the pig...

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6140/1509.summary

There are plenty of bodies. Fatal head injuries are surprisingly common. If it meant a £100k donation to my family, they can have my body. What I did with it will always remain in my head though ;-)

To all those commenting as though this will be happening next year or next month, the realistic view is that until we have the technology to restore function in a quadriplegic we will not be performing head transplants anytime soon.

A project outline is just a project outline- only a step up from a napkin doodle. I have actually sat down with friends of mine over a dozen scotches and made 'project outlines' that involve wiring up circulatory systems to a redundant twin, or a immuno-naive xenograft (read: pig). Came up with some hilarious medical chat regarding the procedure. Whilst it's all well and good to talk about the surgical procedures that would be required and the drugs and machines you could use during different parts of a procedure there's a long way from chat to implementation. Not to say that some human centipede stuff isn't possible given the right twisted individual and correct resources and time

What's hard about connecting spines? Is it that the nerves don't "match up"?

It's been mentioned elsewhere but neuroplasticity means it doesn't matter about 'matching up'. The problem is making the connections stick and regrow. At the moment we can't do this with the spinal cord. Peripheral nervous system nerves regrow if they are lined up correctly, although the fastest speed they will regrow at is 1mm per day. even if you could get central nervous system nerves to regrow like this you are looking at around 4 years for the average person to regrow the nerve to move their big toe (around 1500mm from base of spine to toe). Then you need to ensure that the sensory nerve roots, which have their nerve bodies in the dorsal root ganglion of the spinal cord, will grow up to the brain and integrate in the brainstem with the ascending 'last leg' nerves.

Other people are talking about glues and other substances that may speed this up (ie instead of requiring a nerve to regrow it could just attach to the other side and start working, like having a set of ethernet cables from the brain and just plugging them into the other side) however they are all just as experimental as the general concept of removing and replacing a head as far as I can tell

That's very informative, thank you.

I mostly agree, but fixing quadriplegics, who have some kind of accidental damage to the spinal cord and will probably have to wait at least several hours before surgery, may turn out to be harder than reconnecting the spinal cord immediately after a precise cut in controlled conditions.

(Of course right now we can't do it in either circumstance.)

I foresee a future dominated by wealthy, semi-senile "immortals" in virile, muscular young vat-grown bodies.

At least, I hope they're vat-grown.

Plenty of people die from traumatic head injuries leaving otherwise healthy bodies. There's lots of potential donors.

Even with new bodies, however, aging takes quite the toll on the brain. Fixing that would likely fix the need for body transplants, and not fixing it would make more than a single transplant a depressing prospect.

The clearest use for this technique, were it ever viable, would be just what the article stated: the treatment of otherwise terminal illnesses (or, for that matter, massive body trauma).

Arrange in advance to donate your healthy body at the time of your death to someone in exchange for money going towards the future of your family. A form of life insurance.

I don't intend to die with a healthy body.

Most people with healthy bodies don't intend to die, and yet life insurance is prevalent.

> Plenty of people die from traumatic head injuries leaving otherwise healthy bodies. There's lots of potential donors.

If this tech is available, I can see much more "accidents" happening.

The paper envisions post-op reproduction as possible: "The chimera would carry the mind of the recipient but, should he or she reproduce, the offspring would carry the genetic inheritance of the donor."

If the head and the body came from citizens of two different countries, what citizenship would the child have, presuming it is born in a land where citizenship flows from that one parent?

It would be the same nationality as the parents Passport

Assuming a rational legal decision, as opposed to a pitchforks-and-torches one, I think that legal identity would have to be attached to the mind rather than the body. If the body currently belongs to a recognized citizen, then offspring of the body should be treated as offspring of the citizen, regardless of who may have previously owned it.

I'm glad that there are people out there thinking about these things. I've witnessed first hand some pretty amazing limb functionality improvements through nerve repair and definitely understand his confidence in that realm. However, I can't think of a scenario in which testing this really could be justified. The one that comes to mind first, of course, is a quadriplegic. But really, we'd be putting a real person through an incredibly traumatic procedure with a high likelihood of fatality for a chance at motility. I don't think there'd be much support for that.

A body (or bodies) involved in a fatal accident are perfect test subjects.

What if a conscious person 100% agrees to donating him/herself as a subject for such a test (as a Reciever)? What if the bodies come from brain-dead patients who have fully admitted to donating their bodies (As a donor)?

I see no problem here if all involved persons accept to the procedure. And yes there will always be shady circumstances, but we also have that today with life-insurances, faked deaths, black market organ trade etc.

Why not just ask people? Why do we always have to talk 100 years about it being ethically OK, when there are people that WANT to be volunteers.

I think they would probably test it on smaller mammals first, e.g. rats, and practice until the success rate is 90%+, then move on to bigger animals, and so on, and when they perfect the technique, try it on humans. I don't think I'll support it, but I think that would be more easily acceptable if it can be shown the mortality rate can be kept low.

This may be the coolest thing i've ever read. It also reminds me of an old Russian science fiction book "Professor Dowell's Head" a little

Shouldn't it be called body transplantation?

If it's a human head on some other human's body, I wonder what the psychological effects will be; IIRC, limbs have been transplanted before, and in some cases they were removed again because the recipient rejected it mentally - that's not my arm.

The obvious crazy-sci-fi use of this is transplanting an older head/brain into a younger, cloned body.

While this would only happen many years in the future, if at all, to say this raises ethical issues is a serious understatement.

Oh there are tons of similar issues ranging from physics (teleportation/entanglment) to medicine, science is cruel :-)

The other obvious crazy-sci-fi scenario would be a young person who survives a massive organ failure by getting their head grafted onto a 70-year-old donor's body. That sounds pretty intense as a topic for a novel.

Part of the plot in dystopic This Perfect Day, by Ira Levine.

Heinlein had an interesting twist in I Will Fear No Evil -- old billionaire male gets brain transplanted into body of a young female.

A new way for sex change coming? The ability to do the almost impossible adam's apple change, along with the body in a single step.

The Adam's apple is actually really easy--google "tracheal shave." The visible bump is just cartilage; shaving it down is an outpatient surgery, and the scar is virtually invisible after a couple of months.

But yeah, I also thought of transgender applications. Hmm... I'm not sure if the logistics work if we're getting the bodies from head-trauma victims. For one thing, they'll probably go to saving lives first. Even if there's no immediate need and the body won't keep, can you imagine that conversation? "Yes, we have an eligible female body on ice and waiting for you. Be at the hospital in an hour, and plan to spend the next year or four in recovery. Hope you've got really great insurance."

But if we get to the point where donor bodies can be cloned from the patient's DNA and grown in vitro, it should be feasible to flip that one chromosome. That would be a hell of a thing.

It's a body transplant.

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