Re: NEURO: Head Transplants"

hal@finney.org
Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:22:15 -0700

Kathryn Aegis, <k_aegis@mindspring.com>, writes:
> Christopher Reeve at this point probably could not afford the operation.
> He has gone through four different health insurance policies to pay for the
> equipment and staff needed to keep his body in a condition where it would
> be useable should he be cured of his paralysis.
>
> Perhaps he would volunteer to undergo one of the first attempts to do this
> on a human, provided that doctors would agree to experiment on someone so
> famous. His celebrity status would go a long way in helping the general
> public to overcome some fears about radical body modification.

But Reeve wouldn't benefit from the procedure, unless or until his current body begins to fail. And the new body, once headless, will presumably begin to deteriorate as well. Since he was reasonably athletic before his accident he probably had a pretty good body to start with. So it would be some time before it would make sense for him to switch to a new one.

Hal