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[scrdest]

Dr. Sergio Canavero is attempting to make a human head transplant from a Russian patient with a muscle wasting disease to a braindead donor.

Daily Fail, but Science Alert confirms it.

[Moghjubar]

Dr. Sergio Canavero is attempting to make a human head transplant from a Russian patient with a muscle wasting disease to a braindead donor.

Daily Fail, but Science Alert confirms it.

About damn time we get headswaps.

[Descan]

That feels so bullshit. "We have no idea if this stuff will actually work as intended,  like at all. But if it doesn't, we have other options to connect the spinal cords!" How does that even get past the drawing board?!

[forsaken1111]

That feels so bullshit. "We have no idea if this stuff will actually work as intended,  like at all. But if it doesn't, we have other options to connect the spinal cords!" How does that even get past the drawing board?!

Well for one thing there is really not much to lose. The one guy is GOING TO DIE if they don't, and the other guy is a vegetable.

[Tylui]

Which one do you think costs more? this or cryogenics?

[forsaken1111]

Which one do you think costs more? this or cryogenics?

Hard to say. How long do we expect the cryogenics subject to be frozen? I expect the ongoing running costs of keeping a person frozen will eventually eclipse the cost of performing a single operation.

[Flying Dice]

Boeing patents a deflector shield.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I was going to say that they didn't patent a deflector shield, merely a new type of reactive armour but nope. It does seem like they patented deflector shields, though I'm sure that the reality will turn out different than what science fiction has predicted. Plus by the sounds of it, you definitely wouldn't want to be nearby when they activate with all of the energy they're pumping out to create the transient medium. So personal shields are probably still a pipedream.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, for one it sounds like it's going to be purely reactive, at least in this iteration, rather than an "always-up" deal.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[ChairmanPoo]

I am very curious as to what does whichever institution in charge of organ donation management in Russia have to say about this. Braindead donors with an otherwise healthy body are not that frequent. And there's an opportunity cost involved, aka, all those organs which might go to other people.

PD:

While at first I was somewhat skeptical, and suspected the whole thing being just a publicity stunt,  at the very least the guy has quite a few indexed publications.
And has written about this before, in 2013, and again in January this year.

Of course, the sciencealert and DM articles make some comments as to how the whole thing is still on the drawing board, and funding-pending, and speculate on the trial beginning two years hence....

One thing: I kind of wonder if they will or not try it on a non-human primate beforehand. Once again, I'm in the dark as to how are these things regulated in Russia, but  I kind of think they should nonetheless

And, after all that, they still need a donor, of course.

[Flying Dice]

Purely reactive sounds a lot more practical than always-up, to be honest.

More efficient without question, but probably also somewhat less reliable -- if you're relying on sensors to detect situations where the shield is necessary that's another point of failure. Not that constantly maintaining something like that would be practical or possible, I think.

[i2amroy]

And considering that we do already have a way to essentially clone humans, the ability to do a head- or better yet, a brain- transplant is... well, it would change a lot of things. Not to mention the ethical implications- does a clone have rights if just used as a replacement body, or could we use physical trauma in early stages of development to prevent anything other than essential brain functions from developing whatsoever? You know, careful physical trauma to force the clone-body to be braindead in all but the parts required for body regulation, in order to reduce costs?

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a gene treatment out there that if applied during growth could be used to totally prevent the growing body from developing any higher brain functions at all. Much cheaper and less risky than attempting to do it with early physical removal.

What I absolutely don't see happening is that whole "The Island" thing where we grow real people and then harvest them for their organs. That's like a long slippery slope away from where we are in the current day morality.

[wierd]

And considering that we do already have a way to essentially clone humans, the ability to do a head- or better yet, a brain- transplant is... well, it would change a lot of things. Not to mention the ethical implications- does a clone have rights if just used as a replacement body, or could we use physical trauma in early stages of development to prevent anything other than essential brain functions from developing whatsoever? You know, careful physical trauma to force the clone-body to be braindead in all but the parts required for body regulation, in order to reduce costs?

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a gene treatment out there that if applied during growth could be used to totally prevent the growing body from developing any higher brain functions at all. Much cheaper and less risky than attempting to do it with early physical removal.

What I absolutely don't see happening is that whole "The Island" thing where we grow real people and then harvest them for their organs. That's like a long slippery slope away from where we are in the current day morality.

The premise of that movie was absurd. It basically stated that the reason the cloned bodies had to have active minds, was because of some absurd, unsubstantiated requirement the body has for a mind to be there, for it to develop and function correctly.

Nevermind that everything about that is bullshit--  all the body needs is a brainstem, and a feeding tube. That regulates all the essential metabolic activities just fine.

And yes, there are congenital birth defects stemming from genetic and environmental causes that cause anenchephaly. (a defect that cause the fetus to not develop a full head and or brain.)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly

growing headless bodies, or at least brainless ones, is quite feasible.

[scrdest]

If that wikipedia page has an image, I recommend staying away from it. Then again, better than to just use Google.