Is head transplant possible?

Question

Will you donate your head when you die if it was possible?

Answer 1

No... no-one has succesfully managed to splice a spinal cord yet.... Till then, no head transplants

Answer 2

A head transplant has be done on a primate in the 1970s by world reknown neurosurgeon, Dr Robert White.

However, the spinal cord, like some people have astutely observed, was severed and thus the primate was paralysed from the neck down. Many years prior to this, a russian scientist attached the head of a puppy to the neck of a fully grown dog in an experiement to determine whether the puppies head will normal metabolic activity. It did. The video footage of this "two headed monster-dog" is enough to shock some people into joining P.E.T.A but it nonetheless did lay down some important scientific framework for future neurological work as well as becoming the inspiration for Dr White's research.

Assuming that we can overcome the gross factor, not to mention the ethical dilemmas of transplanting a head, the possibility of this development in medicine reaching an explosive climate might just be around the corner with the discovery that specific cells taken from the nasal cavity could just provide the answer to the problem of reconnecting the spinal cord.

... a body transplant would a more accurate term. But I wouldnt mind my head being attached to Van Disels body - or Jessica Simpson's body, for totally different reasons :)

Answer 3

Well, the spinal cord can't be fused once cut yet, so it is currently impossible.

If I died, donating my head would never work because brain cells are the first cell in the body to die from lack of oxygen. The brain would be useless.

It is interesting you call it donating a head. In reality, it would the body that would be donated to the head since it is the brain that houses the seat of consciousness.

Answer 4

It is not possible. Not yet anyway. The head has many organs and you have to be able to reconnect (or splice) a spinal cord or two portions of spinal cords belonging to two different people with different genetic markers, which is even harder in theory. In practice so far we can not transplant or replant the head to a foreign body or the owners own.

Answer 5

No, a head transplant is not possilbe. To do so would require slicing the spinal cord in two bringing instant death to the patient.

Answer 6

YES, it is possible for any mammalian creature.
For humans, monkeys, for anyone.
It is strange but you can find a web site that its name is " Head transplantation" and you sign in it :
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~art511_j/emerging.2001.f/kerrymaster/kerryartproposal2f/headtransplant.html

I signed in it because it is very nice.

also I found it has been for a monkey in 2001 . beleive that by reading this page :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1263758.stm

If you want more confirmation that it is possible for human , I read that :"The majority of neurosurgeons believe that head transplantation in humans will be possible in the near future"

you can read it in this page :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant

Finally, we have to beleive that when someone dies if he got a head transplantation or not , life ( his soul )will not come back again to him.

Answer 7

it's not possible and you can'tdonate a "head" although you can donate corneaswhich are in the head

Answer 8

Actually my friend in Edmonton has already called Dibs on my brain. And my buddy in Arizona has been trying to suck my brains out through my ears for years...

Answer 9

no! absolutely no because of the nerve cells. once the brain doesn't have air o course the cells will be dead. take not: the nerve cells cannot reproduce another. thats why they are still studying stem cells.

Answer 10

Even if it were, I don't know that I would want anyone else's body. Most Americans are fat and ugly.