ARE HEAD TRANSPLANTS VIABLE?

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ARE HEAD TRANSPLANTS VIABLE?

 

Posted By: PROZZAK <Send E-Mail>

Sunday, 20 June 2004, 7:36 a.m.

 

Yes the procedure is patented and it is on the cutting edge of technology.

However moral concerns appear to be holding the technology back. Perhaps for

very, very good reasons.

 

Can you imagine Dick Cheney or Heinz Kissinger living for another 50 or 60

years? Imagine the death, destruction and havoc that such minds could throw

upon mankind. Not to mention the technological advances that crop up between

now and then that could keep such evil creatures alive yet longer?

 

Excerpts taken from:

http://ca.encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/Columns/Default.aspx?Article=sever

edheads

 

In modern society, people have typically been more interested in reuniting

heads with bodies than in separating them.

 

The groundwork for this was laid in 1908, when the American physiologist and

pharmacologist Charles C. Guthrie grafted the head of a dog onto the neck of

a larger mutt, creating a two-brained beast, so to speak.

 

Five decades later, the Russian scientist Vladimir P. Demikhov tried his

hand at head transplantation. In his most memorable experiment, he connected

the head, upper torso, and forelegs of one dog to the neck of another.

Supposedly one of his double dogs lived for nearly a month after the

surgery--if you call that living.

 

Demikhov, who is probably best known for his pioneering work on human heart

transplants, died in December 1998. What became of his head is unclear at

this time.

 

In the 1970s, neurosurgeon Robert White of Cleveland, Ohio, mixed and

matched one rhesus monkey's head with another monkey's body. The rhesus head

remained alert for eight days. Its eyes even followed the movements of

nurses and doctors in attendance.

 

Working on a monkey's head was difficult, according to White. It would be

much easier to achieve success with a human, thanks to the " anatomical

familiarity of most surgeons with the human neck, " he told Kurt Samson, a

UPI medical reporter.

 

" With the significant improvements in surgical techniques and postoperative

management since then, it is now possible to consider adapting the

head-transplant technique to humans, " the surgeon suggested in an article

published in Scientific American magazine in 1989.

 

Not everyone has shared Dr. White's optimism about the dawn of the era of

head transplantations.

 

The image of a severed human head, suspended in midair and attached to a

series of life support machines, so horrified Chet Fleming that he went out

and obtained a U.S. patent for equipment to replicate such a feat. Then he

wrote a 461-page book, telling the world what he'd done and why he did it.

 

The patent, No. 4,666,425, is for " a device, referred herein as a 'cabinet'

which provides physical and biochemical support for an animal's head which

has been 'discorporated' (i.e. severed from the body). "

 

Filed on May 19, 1987, the patent describes in detail the various

technologies and techniques to supply such a head with oxygenated blood and

nutrients and to cleanse deoxygenated waste-laden blood after it circulates

through the brain.

 

Included with the patent are a series of diagrams--a cross-section of the

neck, the special valves for allowing blood to circulate through the brain

and a schematic representation of the various pumping and treatment

steps--just in case there's any ambiguity about the process.

 

Why would anyone, let alone someone admittedly grossed out by heads that can

live on their own, seek such a patent? Fleming explains his true motives in

this book If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive ... Discorporation and U.S.

Patent 4,666,425.

 

If's author believes he can stop other people from making, using, or selling

his invention. This, in effect, gives him power to slow down any

unauthorized discorporation research in America.

 

And why is Fleming opposed to such research? Because there are too many

unanswered questions--mostly legal issues and moral concerns--to move

forward in good faith, he says.

 

" The possibilities are so bizarre that they seem unreal, like a horror

movie, " Fleming observes in his book. " The natural reaction is to shrug them

off, either by ignoring them or by concentrating on details rather than the

big picture. "