Re: MED: "Frankenstein fears after head transplant"

From: zeb haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Apr 07 2001 - 00:19:34 MDT


>From: "Mark Plus" <markplus@hotmail.com>

...

>'Scientifically misleading'
>
>The arguments against head and brain transplants were outlined by Dr
>Stephen
>Rose, director of brain and behavioural research at the Open University.
>
>He said: "This is medical technology run completely mad and out of all
>proportion to what's needed.
>
>"It's entirely misleading to suggest that a head transplant or a brain
>transplant is actually really still connected in anything except in terms
>of
>blood stream to the body to which it has been transplanted.
>

No shit. For a paralyzed person, it's the blood supply which is important.
He's getting from the new body exactly the functionality he had from the old
body, without the multiple organ failure.

>"It's not controlling or relating to that body in any other sort of way."
>

At least in what was quoted, I didn't see anything suggesting that this was
implied.

>He added: "It's scientifically misleading, technically irrelevant and
>scientifically irrelevant, and apart from anything else a grotesque breach
>of any ethical consideration."
>

"ethical consideration" has come to mean reasoning from an ivorty tower
about abstract non-issues while people die.

>"It's a mystification to call it either a head transplant or a brain
>transplant.
>
>"All you're doing is keeping a severed head alive in terms of the
>circulation from another animal. It's not connected in any nervous sense."
>
>The issue of who someone who had received a head transplant would "be" is
>extremely complicated, said Professor Rose.
>

He's wrong. It's pretty clear that it's a body transplant. Although, if you
ask around, you'll be surprised about how many people would disagree. Ask
"If someone put a new brain into your head, would you be getting a new
brain, or would that brain be getting a new body?", a lot of people will
think it's the first.

>"Your person is largely embodied but not entirely in your brain".
>
>He added: "I cannot see any medical grounds for doing this. I cannot see
>that scientifically you would actually be able to regenerate the nerves
>which could produce that sort of control.

I forget the exact quote but someone asked Maxwell of what use his
experiments on electromagnetism was, and he said something like "Of what use
is a newborn baby?".

I wonder - did the reported who approached Dr. Stephen Rose lie to him about
what the experiment was about?

>
>"And I think that the experiments are the sort that are wholly unethical
>and
>inappropriate for any possible reason."
>

We live in a world of stupid pigfuckers and I'm reminded of it more and more
every day...

---------------------------------------------------
Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
My personal webpage:
http://www.inconnect.com/~zharadon/ubunix
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com

"What is this, some Three Stooges episode where everyone is armed with pies?
  Bill Gates is supposed to walk through the airport with an armful of pies
so that he can stoop to the level of his attackers?" -Chris Russo

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