A head transplant is a surgical operation involving the replacement of an organism's head with a replacement head. It should not be confused with another hypothetical surgical operation, the brain transplant. Head transplantation inevitably involves decapitating the patient.
Since the technology required to reattach a severed spinal cord has not yet been developed, the subject of a head transplant would be a quadriplegic, unless proper therapies, presumably along the lines of stem cell therapy, had been developed. This technique has been proposed as possibly useful for people who are already quadriplegics, and who are suffering from widespread organ failures which would otherwise require many different and difficult transplant surgeries. It may also be useful for people who would rather be quadriplegic than dead (for example because of progress in brain-computer interfaces). As of this time, there is no uniform consensus on the ethics of such a procedure.
Since the technology required to reattach a severed spinal cord has not yet been developed, the subject of a head transplant would be a quadriplegic, unless proper therapies, presumably along the lines of stem cell therapy, had been developed. This technique has been proposed as possibly useful for people who are already quadriplegics, and who are suffering from widespread organ failures which would otherwise require many different and difficult transplant surgeries. It may also be useful for people who would rather be quadriplegic than dead (for example because of progress in brain-computer interfaces). As of this time, there is no uniform consensus on the ethics of such a procedure.
No comments:
Post a Comment