Ageing bypass
What is definite is that head transplantation—or physique transplant, as some choose to name it—is a topic of rising, if speculative, curiosity in longevity circles, the type inhabited by biohackers, techno-anarchists, and others on the fringes of biotechnology and the startup scene and who kind probably the most devoted cadre of utmost life-extensionists.
Many proponents of longer life spans will admit issues don’t look good. Anti-aging medication to this point hasn’t achieved any breakthroughs. In actual fact, as analysis advances into the molecular particulars, the issue of loss of life solely appears an increasing number of sophisticated. As we age, our billions of cells regularly succumb to the irreversible results of entropy. Fixing which will by no means be doable.
By comparability, placing your head on a younger physique appears comparatively straightforward—a option to bypass getting older in a single stroke, no less than so long as your mind holds out. The thought was strongly endorsed in a technical highway map put ahead this yr by the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, a gaggle espousing radical life extension, which rated “physique alternative” as the most affordable, quickest pathway to “resolve getting older.”
Will head transplants work? In a crude means, they have already got. Within the early Seventies, the American neurosurgeon Robert White carried out a “cephalic alternate,” chopping off the top of a monkey, putting it on the physique of one other, and stitching collectively their circulatory programs. Stories recommend the top remained aware, and in a position to see, for a number of days earlier than it died.
More than likely, a human head transplant would even be deadly. However even for those who lived, you’d be a thoughts atop a paralyzed physique, since exchanging heads means severing the spinal wire.
But head-swapping proponents can level to believable options for that, too—quite a lot of which seem within the BrainBridge video. In Europe, as an illustration, some paralyzed folks have walked once more after docs bridged their spinal accidents with electronics. Different scientists in China are finding out development components to regrow nerves.
Joined on the neck
As surprising because the video is, BrainBridge is in some methods overly typical in its pondering. If you wish to hold your mind going, why should it’s on a human physique? You would possibly as a substitute hold the top alive on a heart-lung machine—with an Elon Musk neural implant to let it surf the web, for so long as it lives. Or think about how docs hoping to resolve the organ scarcity have began placing hearts and kidneys from genetically engineered pigs into sufferers. In case you don’t thoughts having a tail and 4 legs, perhaps your head may very well be positioned onto a pig’s physique.
Let’s take it a step additional. Why does the physique “donor” must be lifeless in any respect? Anatomically, it’s doable to have two heads. There are conjoined twins who share one physique. In case your partner have been recognized with a deadly most cancers, you’ll certainly welcome his or her head subsequent to yours, if it allowed their thoughts to reside on. In spite of everything, the idea of a “residing donor” is broadly accepted in transplant medication already, and married {couples} are sometimes mentioned to be joined on the hip. Why not on the neck, too?
