There have been several threads about immortality, and ways to achieve it. Also, a fewon “John Carter of Mars”-I remember that there was a character in these books, a surgeon of Barsoom (Ras Thavas, MD), who made quite a good living transplanting brains into new bodies. The thought just struck me…we CAN be immortal!
First, safe brain transplantation has to be developed (surgeons-how difficult is this?). Second, we need a supply of healthy human bodies…and the answer is cloning! You just have yourself cloned, and wait until your clone reaches age 18 or so…then, you have your brain transplanted into the clone, and presto-you now have 60+ years added to your life!
Imagine…having sex again with the body of an 18 year old!
This oughtta be a TOP priority! Who will need plastic surgeons if this takes off!
Keep in mind that the brain deteriorates as well, so immortality would only be possible if we found a way to transfer consciousness from one brain to another.
Naah. The part you’re keeping (the brain) is the one part in which the cells don’t get replenished. So quite aside from our inadequate grasp of neurlogical secrets (how to knit the spinal cord back together so the brain is hooked up again, etc), you’d still wear out within your first 2-3 bodies due to brain deterioration.
I would guess that due to the difficulties in reconnecting the nervous system, it will not be even nearly possible until the development of working medical nanomachines (whch may or may not ever happen).
BTW, is the layout of the neurons in the spinal column the same for every individual?, or is it one of those sort of self-organisng things?
In addition to the medical difficulties, I can foresee a legal one: This plan of yours would necessitate murdering your clone. I’m pretty sure you don’t get a get-out-of-jail-free card just because he’s genetically identical to you.
What you would have to do is grow a clone without the higher function brain tissue and just transplant those bits of brain that hold your personality. That way you minimize the amount of old brain tissue you have to use.
Or transfer the brain into the body of…a gorilla!
Yeeessssss…a gorilla. That should do nicely!
That doesn’t sound at all simple; the idea that there is some part or few parts of the brain that are responsible for our personality sounds bogus.
I also don’t think there would be any simple way to grow the clone without very specific bits of brain.
By the time (and if) we have that sort of technology, you might just as well create a mechanical android body, or one composed entirely of nanomachines (which would give you a limited shapeshifting potential). Or just print a new body in a huge organ printer (better make sure it isn’t an Epson though)
Why do we need bodies?
I’m being serious here.
Will there ever be a time when our decapitated heads will be able to be attached to a machine that aerates and nourishes our brains? Sort of like Futurama except more complicated. What are the potential pitfalls in pulling off such a plan?
When I have contemplated this subject (& scarily I have) I have often wondered if a HEAD transplant might not be easier to achieve than an actual brain transplant. In fact, based on the article below I think this may be possible quite a few decades before an actual “brain transplant” per se is feasible.
In theory you need: A. to keep the disconnected head alive for a few minutes and B. reconnect the spinal cord all the while C. preventing brain damage. Monumentaly difficult. Still, much more feasible (in todays terms) than reconnecting an entire brain.
RED HERRING but bioehicist type thought: If your baby bro was brain dead and you were about to pull the plug and Mr. Burns of the Simpsons waltzes in & offered you and the family $300 million for the body - would ya? EXCELLENT!
If you transplanted a female’s head on a male’s body, would the end result be a woman? Or a man?
America wants to know.
Not being able to walk, play football, masturbate etc… I don’t think many people would enjoy it for long.
If you mix strawberries and bananas, does it taste of strawberries, or bananas.
The result (assuming it survived etc.) would be the body of a male with a female head.
Sounds like the best of both worlds.
[sub]so sorry for messing up the thread[/sub]
I think replacing chunks of brain with silicon or biological computers will be closer in range than transplanting the entire brain. Much more rewarding as well. Just think of having a chip the size of a quarter implanted in the back of the neck or upper back that had several hundred gig storage capacity.
Seems much more likely than a brain transplant. 
Quite right.
For reasons that have never been clear to me, lots of these discussions about the possibilities of cloning include the assumption that you own & control your clone. Why would that be so?
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There probably aren’t any parts of the brain that are responsible for personality. The pendulum has swung between parts of the brain having a highly specialized function, and more globalized functionality. The evidence now favors a more global view. This is, of course, oversimplified - look at Phineas Gage, and his change in personality after a part of his brain was forcibly removed by a tamping rod. But these changes in personality were because a lot of higher brain functions were disabled, including inhibition. It’s not because the personality is stored in the pre-frontal lobe. Or anywhere.
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I’m not sure that getting any part of the brain to interface with a microchip would be any easier than grafting neural connections to the spinal cord. You still gotta do the same trick… wire the neurons to something foreign. I don’t guess it would make much difference if that something foreign were silicon or carbon based.
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If it’s immortality your after, I’d put more faith in computers being able to eventually replicate that thing we call the mind. Once we’re able to do that, it would be possible (although perhaps not easy) to build a computer model of your mind. It’s a GD whether the model = the thing itself in this instance, but I’ve got a feeling it does… what’s probably gonna suck is this tech won’t be available for another 150 years… we’ll be maybe 70 - 90 years shy.
We are getting close now a days to interacting with our brain via our nervous system. You don’t have to hook up to the brain so much as plug into some neurons in your arms. It all reports to the same place.
Interestingly enough, progress is being done, not matter what the theorists say- most functions of the brain are localized. The hippocampus, cochleah, etc. They should be close to having cochlear implants that hook right into the brain.
Some reading material for ya:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993523
http://www.futurefantastic.net/exhibits/implants/implants.htm
http://online.sfsu.edu/~swilson/emerging/artre332.bionics.html
http://www.neuroprosthesis.org/blogger.html
This one is rather interesting- The doctor is going to wire this chip to his OWN nervous system-
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/12/07/robot.man/
Several other articles:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901020311-214250,00.html
http://future.newsday.com/6/fnow0606.htm
It is probably going to be happening in the next 60 years. (My estimate anyhow)
Well, if one wanted to grow a clone that didn’t have higher brain functions, you might try the “mechanical” method…just find a way of destroying the cloned fetus’ brain at a relatively early point in gestation, without killing the entire fetus. Surgical removal or destruction of most of the fetus’ brain, while leaving the fetus’ brain stem intact would be somewhat “problematic,” I’d guess. Due to intracranial bleeding and tissue inflammation. I’d recommend using an artifical womb to incubate the clone, which would allow easy access for surgical decerebrating, as well as enabling your medical team to connect the fetus to an (even more) invasive life-support system to keep it’s body alive after the brain stem has been destroyed.
I’d predict a high “failure rate,” though. So you should probably have at least a few-dozen clones being incubated at any given time. This would, naturally, get very “pricey” very fast.
As for the “Head Transplant vs. Brain Transplant” debate, the one advantage I can think of that Brain T’s have over Head T’s is that, according to the research of Dr. Robert White, the brain may be “immunologically sound”—that it won’t be rejected by the donor (host?) body’s immune system. But, on the other hand, the Dura might not be"immunologically sound," which would render the entire point moot.
Besides, if I were a surgeon, I’d rather face grafting a new head onto a neck stump, rather than opening up a LARGE whole the skull, ever so gently moving in the new brain without damaging it (Him? Her?) reconnecting the blood supply and all the nerves to the sensory organs, reclosing the skull, worrying about inflammation or infection killing the patient, etc.
Ranchoth
(If there’s anyone else here with as great a love for this subject, I’d like to meet them)