February 26, 2015

"An Italian surgeon is hoping to perform the world’s first human head transplant..."

"... claiming he could have recipients of the radical surgery thinking their own thoughts and speaking with their own voice."

Oh, I know what that looks like. The question is: How much are they paying you?

31 comments:

traditionalguy said...

If there is a God who created His man on earth, then man's current godlike fooling around with human zygotes genetic codes and human heads switching bodies will probably not go on much longer.

Anonymous said...

This would be a "Full Body Transplant", not a head transplant.

The guy providing the body wont get a new head.

rather, the guy with the head gets a new body...

lemondog said...

It's been done:

The Thing with Two Heads

The Thing With Two Heads (Trailer)

ddh said...

Frankenstein.

FullMoon said...

Gonna make those sex changes a whole lot easier.

Eventually they can get velcro and google involved and people can have a closet full of bodies for different occasions

traditionalguy said...

This could create a market for Isis only a short trip from Libya to Italy.

If anyone has surplus heads and surplus headless bodies ISIS has. Customers will like the low prices and also like the idea of picking out live ones the way they do lobsters from a tank.

Curious George said...

Hey, was that garage's head on the other end in the vid?

YoungHegelian said...

Note to future surgeons: Do not accept donor heads from anyone named "Abby Normal".

It never ends well.

David said...

Lots of heads available these days. The transplant list is probably short.

YoungHegelian said...

Can you imagine the liability issues with something like this?

Why, the hazard for sexual harassment suits alone is staggering for each time during surgery when the surgeon says to the OR nurse "Okay, nurse, now's the time to give me head".

Michael K said...

"Okay, nurse, now's the time to give me head".

That was the lifeguard's line to the female genie.

Anonymous said...

I assume this will require a team of surgeons. So someone is the head head surgeon. Would the assistant head surgeons be called a "fluffers?"

And once it becomes common, there will be a department head of Head surgery.

"Grandpa needs a new body, we're just hoping for an accident down at the lumber mill. Somebody falls asleep next to one of saws, that sort of thing."

"Oh Tommy, you've got such a good head on your shoulders."
"It's original equipment all the way down, baby."

Anonymous said...

Med students observing the operation will be told to bring catchers mitts in case the patient "nods off" during the procedure.

Bob Boyd said...

Could you put a male head on a female body or vice versa?

CatherineM said...

I think of Rosie Grier.

http://youtu.be/gWHNA_j7h5A

CatherineM said...

Oops! Lemondog beats me!

SteveR said...

“The real stumbling block is the ethics,”

Sure Doc

Laslo Spatula said...

The meme starts here:

"That butt-fucked my Mind!"

(TBFMM)

I am Laslo.

William said...

China won't be repealing capital punishment anytime soon.

Laslo Spatula said...

So will we be able to put a transgendered male's head on top of a female's body?

That cold solve some things.

Plus: loose female head. That's gotta be good for something.


I am Laslo.

n.n said...

SteveR:

After revising The Hippocratic Oath to provide elective abortion services, the real stumbling block is... there is none. A human life, and certainly the clumps of cells that embody it, is a commodity from conception to a natural, accidental, or premeditated death. The sacrifice seems too high, but many, even a majority, disagree. Time will tell.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Laslo Spatula said: "That butt-fucked my Mind".
As opposed to mind-fucking your butt?

Michael K said...

The annoying thing about silly stories like this is that it minimizes the serious work being done on spinal cord injuries.

chickelit said...

What's the state of the art regarding organ transplant rejections these days? Anything goes with post-op treatment?

tim maguire said...

When he. Says "their own thoughts" and "their own voices," who's the they? Logically the "their" in "their own thoughts" refers to the body, but the "their" in "their own voices" could go either way.

Is he hoping to put both people in there?

lgv said...

He already has volunteers. I wonder if they want new bodies or new heads, I'm guessing new bodies. Any volunteer body donors?

It's a stupid article. It has yet to be done successfully on an animal. It would take years of successful animal trials before the first human attempt. Defining success could take years itself.

Robert Cook said...

I saw O LUCKY MAN! in 1973 (or 74?) when it came out, and that scene horrified me at the time. It's still horrifying, the more so because the man/sheep doesn't (can't?) say anything, but merely whimpers in anguish.

walter said...

What kind of world are we heading into? The future is now.
The prophet and potential recipient:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vM3QAjWH8Q

Peter said...

The ultimate sex-change surgery: swap heads.

Ann Althouse said...

"I saw O LUCKY MAN! in 1973 (or 74?) when it came out, and that scene horrified me at the time. It's still horrifying, the more so because the man/sheep doesn't (can't?) say anything, but merely whimpers in anguish."

I saw the movie then too, and that scene was and remains the most terrifying thing I've ever seen in the movies. The inarticulate suffering of the man puts you inside his head. How would you feel if you'd lost your body and had become only a hopeless head?

There was something similar in the 70s "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"... a man's head on a dog, here.

jaed said...

And don't forget the classic, the original movie version of "The Fly".

<shudder>