Growing old bypass
What is definite is that head transplantation—or physique transplant, as some want to name it—is a topic of rising, if speculative, curiosity in longevity circles, the sort 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 maximum life-extensionists.
Many proponents of longer life spans will admit issues don’t look good. Anti-aging drugs to date hasn’t achieved any breakthroughs. The truth is, as analysis advances into the molecular particulars, the issue of loss of life solely appears increasingly more sophisticated. As we age, our billions of cells step by step succumb to the irreversible results of entropy. Fixing that will by no means be potential.
By comparability, placing your head on a younger physique appears comparatively simple—a approach to bypass growing old in a single stroke, at the very least so long as your mind holds out. The concept was strongly endorsed in a technical highway map put ahead this yr by the Longevity Biotech Fellowship, a bunch espousing radical life extension, which rated “physique alternative” as the most affordable, quickest pathway to “remedy growing old.”
Will head transplants work? In a crude manner, they have already got. Within the early Seventies, the American neurosurgeon Robert White carried out a “cephalic change,” chopping off the pinnacle of a monkey, inserting it on the physique of one other, and stitching collectively their circulatory techniques. Stories recommend the pinnacle remained aware, and in a position to see, for just a few days earlier than it died.
Probably, 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 twine.
But head-swapping proponents can level to believable options for that, too—plenty 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 learning development elements to regrow nerves.
Joined on the neck
As surprising because the video is, BrainBridge is in some methods overly standard in its considering. If you wish to hold your mind going, why should it’s on a human physique? You may as an alternative hold the pinnacle 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 take into account how docs hoping to resolve the organ scarcity have began placing hearts and kidneys from genetically engineered pigs into sufferers. Should you don’t thoughts having a tail and 4 legs, perhaps your head might be positioned onto a pig’s physique.
Let’s take it a step additional. Why does the physique “donor” must be useless in any respect? Anatomically, it’s potential to have two heads. There are conjoined twins who share one physique. In case your partner had been recognized with a deadly most cancers, you’d certainly welcome his or her head subsequent to yours, if it allowed their thoughts to stay on. In spite of everything, the idea of a “dwelling donor” is extensively accepted in transplant drugs already, and married {couples} are sometimes mentioned to be joined on the hip. Why not on the neck, too?