Ep44 - The First Head Transplant
Podcast |
Generation Why?
Publisher |
The Network Studios
Media Type |
audio
Podknife tags |
Comedy
Society & Culture
Categories Via RSS |
Comedy
Society & Culture
Publication Date |
Apr 15, 2015
Episode Duration |
00:05:25
What’s up every body welcome to generation why. The future is upon us, guys, its finally happening. Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero has claimed that the first human head transplant could be possible within the next two years and he intends to attempt the procedure on his new human volunteer, Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian man. Spiridonov is a sufferer of the rare genetic Werdnig-Hoffman muscle wasting disease that progresses worse and worse every year. Most people who have it don’t live past 20 but this Russian hero is now 30 years old. His condition will eventually kill him if he doesn’t get a new body so he is the perfect candidate, but can it really be done and should it be done? There are still many scientists who believe it’s beyond our medical capabilities and there are scientists that just believe it’s not an ethical procedure to perform. I call them wet blanket scientists. The kind of people that want to ruin the fun of other the scientists, who are just trying to perform highly experimental and dangerous procedures on other humans. You know real scientists. The kind that names the monsters they’ve created after themselves. I think they are called mad scientists and the world is severely lacking in them. Dr. Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, stated “I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death." Well that’s extremely easy for him to say because he doesn’t have a terminal illness that makes your muscles to stop developing during childhood, causing your skeleton to become deformed. Someone who is actually dying might have a different viewpoint. I guess the scientific consensus is, this experiment probably wont work and even if it does… god help him. Essentially, we have no idea what this will do to Spiridonov’s mind if successful. There’s no telling what the transplant - and all the new connections and foreign chemicals that his head and brain will have to suddenly deal with - will do to Spiridonov’s psyche, but according to the Daily Mail, it could result in a hitherto never experienced level and quality of insanity. Oh really? So what you’re really trying to say is this could ultimately lead to the creation of the world’s first super villain. I mean the man is Russian computer scientist, so that movie pretty much writes itself. This kind of thing has been attempted before but never on a human. The first attempt at a head transplant was carried out on a dog by Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov in 1954. He made several attempts but the dogs only survived between two and six days. It really can’t be a coincidence that the Russians always seem to be involved. The first successful head transplant, in which one head was replaced by another, was carried out in 1970. The head of one monkey was put onto the body of another. They didn't attempt to join the spinal cords, though, so the monkey couldn't move its body, but it was able to breathe with artificial assistance. The monkey lived for nine days until its immune system rejected the head and it died. So I guess the message here is these people have a very different definition of successful than I do. I feel like if that happens to Mr. Spiridonov he might not consider that a success. Actually none of the articles I read mentioned a case where a head transplant did not ultimately lead to the animal’s death, so maybe this is a little ambitious, but society is nothing without crazy Italian neurosurgeons who cant wait to chop a sick Russian’s head off and see if they can’t sew it onto the body of a freshly deceased organ donor. Canavero believes we are technologically capable of this and I hope he’s right because think of the implications it would have. Basically means rich people could pretty much live forever and that’s what we have been working towards as a society. I’m looking forward to the day when we can make a clone of Brad Pitt just to chop its head off and throw an old billionaire on there instead. Did we need to go to the moon? No we were just showing off. Did we need to calculate the weight of the universe? Hell no, how is that useful information to anyone? Did we need to invent the Segway? Absolutely not. Without the Segway we wouldn’t have Paul Blart mall cop, and for that reason alone an argument could be made that its one of the most detrimental inventions ever to wreak havoc on society. We did these things because we could, and that’s the same reason we should chop off Valery Spiridonov’s head and sew it on a dead guy. I say better to do it on a willing, terminally ill, human, than an extremely unlucky dog.

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