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[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Sorry if my random questions butt in and stamp out other discussions but you guys seem to give some pretty great answers


How long do you guys think it will be until we can perform full body ((minus nervous system because that's what I think makes a person them, brain included in the nervous system right? If not then the brain as well)) transplant?

[wierd]

Given that the major factors are rejection, and successful nervous system grafting, and that gene therapy is close to allowing wider organ transplantation, and recent work with cultured olfactory bulb glial cell treatments for spinal damage repair...

Probably within the next 20 years, for sure.

[wierd]

If you can be bothered get me just the one on the ignition phase. I'm interested to see the relative difference in intensity from late-stage quiescent levels and timescales involved.

Not a paper, it's an expensive book-- But google has a searchable version. The page of interest is page 22. Looks like a very good book, Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System,  By John Lewis.

[hops]

I'm imagining a full body transplant procedure and realized that you'd also need to take out the spine.

...The image of a scalpel running through your back, delicately slicing it open and removing a bloody spine along with your skull.

But then I realized that you don't actually need to take out the spine.

[Furtuka]

Sorry if my random questions butt in and stamp out other discussions but you guys seem to give some pretty great answers


How long do you guys think it will be until we can perform full body ((minus nervous system because that's what I think makes a person them, brain included in the nervous system right? If not then the brain as well)) transplant?

I remmeber seeing an article mentioning someone out there is planning to attempt a head transplant in a couple years. Too tired to go look for it though.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

They have pulled off body transplants (removing the head and attaching it to a different body) the only problem they had was the person was permanently paralyzed, had to stay on full life support, and died soon after the procedure.
They've don't the same thing with animals and I think a couple people before IIRC they get arrested.

I heard this from the tv show ((Dark Matters?)) which looks at the dark side of scientific research.

[miauw62]

Well, I wouldn't call it a successful transplant if the body fails to do the two things it's supposed to do.

[forsaken1111]

Yeah I wouldn't call that 'pulling it off'. More like a badly failed attempt.

[ChairmanPoo]

As far as I know head transplant hasn't ever been attempted in humans. It worked (poorly) in monkeys because of the aforementioned reasons.


By the way, you can induce organ graft tollerance via a mini-alloHSCT from the organ donor.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Well, I wouldn't call it a successful transplant if the body fails to do the two things it's supposed to do.

Well the head was kept alive and the heart in the body was pumping
not sure if the other organs were working

As far as I know head transplant hasn't ever been attempted in humans. It worked (poorly) in monkeys because of the aforementioned reasons.

Ya I'm not sure if the human part that they talked about was true or not because that show has a tendency to add a little fluff to make things more dark.

[hops]

Yeah I think the tricky part with head transplants are spines.
We still can't fix broken spines (otherwise we would have been able to cure spinal injury-induced paralysis) so it's unlikely we can a head off from the spine, then rejoin it with another spine.

[wierd]

Again, Recent advances in spinal cord repair have been made using a graft made from tendon, infused with glial cells from the human olfactory bulb.

This makes sense, as the cells in the olfactory bulb continue to divide and proliferate all through adult life. These cells can apparently be leveraged for repair of completely severed spinal columns, which is what this experimental procedure accomplished.

A full body transplant would be more complicated however, because of host/graft rejection. The cells introduced to accomplish the regeneration would have to come from the still living head, which means they would be an allograft for the host spine.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Now the true question ((not really this is just a bad attempt at light hearted comedy)) of full body transplant, who is the host? The nervous system or the full healthy body?

[wierd]

The preponderance of the immune system would come from the new body, thus the head is the graft, and the body the host.

[MonkeyHead]

Pretty sure trials in monkeys (or maybe apes) with head transplants have been semi successful, in as much as the subject lived for a number of hours before expiry. Not fab, but its a start.

Now the true question ((not really this is just a bad attempt at light hearted comedy)) of full body transplant, who is the host? The nervous system or the full healthy body?

Well, the nervous system is the seat of conciousness, hosted by a bag 'o meat. The meat sack is nothing without the mind.