For example, there are healthy people with no arms and no legs. Are there people who have survived for any long duration with just a head, heart, and a few other essential organs?
2006-12-14 08:24:02 · 6 answers · asked by cmsb705 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
I've always thought this was a neat question. I guess it depends on how long you're talking about and what constitutes survival. There were a few experiments in France with the guillotine and the severed heads. Victims could live for 15-30 seconds completely severed from their bodies as evidenced by blinking and responding to their names beings called.
That being said, the only thing you really need to stay conscious and alive is nutrition to your brain. We can oxygenate, clean, and pump blood entirely artificially now with bypass machines, so in theory it's possible to just plug a severed head into that. I doubt we could keep it going for very long... but the person would be alive and well and in communication (in one form or another) with the rest of the world. If you were really motivated, you could remove all of the unnecessary parts of the head and just supply the brain. The person would still be conscious, they just wouldn't be able to communicate. After you've got it down that far, you might as well keep going! There are several areas of the brain that aren't particularly necessary for anything, so you can carefully carve all of those away, and your person is still locked up in a living brain as long as you give it what the body would have. Anything else you remove would take part of them away without really "killing" them.
My point is that death isn't very cut and dry. What counts as dead in one part of the world counts as alive in another part. In one state, a very dead patient is very alive in another. After any one of us dies, there are cells in our bodies that stay alive a long time.
Who knows who has the record for being the smallest fraction of a body!
Mike
2006-12-14 08:50:46 · answer #1 · answered by Mike D 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
hey dont joke man ,a person with only head and heart living is not that posssible but as per ur question with som a few other essential organs a average thing is upto the location he lives,as per cold countries may b upto 50to60,in deserts like 40to50or more if healthyand it goes on varying .that all i can give u
2006-12-14 08:31:46 · answer #2 · answered by firebolt_mahesh 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Analyze the system. You need blood (circulatory system), a pump (heart), oxygen (lungs), brain stem function to regulate the whole (brain), feeding system (mouth/food input system stomach/intestinal tract to some degree), excretory system. Everything else is a peripheral.
2006-12-14 08:35:19 · answer #3 · answered by dmzltc 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I'm thinking like 30%. Like on Monty Python.
2006-12-14 08:26:02 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I'm Going with 10%.The lower one is 0%.
2006-12-14 13:01:49 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you lose your arms AND legs, that is pretty much the most you can lose and still live.
2006-12-14 08:32:32 · answer #6 · answered by ModernMerlin 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋