X-Message-Number: 8706
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 1997 09:39:06 +0000 (GMT)
From:  (Randy)
Subject: Wacky Brits at it again
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics

Great Britain seems to be in the forefront of sci-med experimentation
that might be needed for cryonics (or would seem to make cryonics more
plausible): first the Dolly cloning; then a couple of weeks ago, a
scientist in Great Britain claimed to have cloned headless frog
bodies, and now semi-successful monkey head transplants....
Several excerpts from the 11-2-97 London Sunday Times follow:

"Monkeys are given head transplants 


by Lois Rogers 
Medical Correspondent 



SURGEONS have transplanted monkeys' heads on to fresh bodies, paving the 
way for a new era in human transplant technology. 
By maintaining the brain stem,  which deals with reflexes such as 
breathing, heart function and digestion, the research team has been 
able to keep the new brain supplied with fresh, oxygenated blood. 

A series of experiments involving up to 30 animals has allowed surgeons 
to perfect a technique of minimising loss of blood supply to the heads
during severance operations. 

The researchers also believe there was little disturbance to the 
monkeys' higher brain functions as a result of the procedure. 

The animals were able to maintain the cycle of waking and sleeping.  They 
were capable of visually tracking laboratory staff and could react to 
voices and noises. 

Their facial nerves were still operational and they could eat and drink 
normally. When a member of the team put a finger into an experimental 
animal's mouth when it seemed irritable, he was bitten. "....

"The latest developments in the 20-year project, including the vital step 
of achieving respiration in the transplanted heads, have been reported
in an American scientific journal by Robert White, professor of 
neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. 

White believes the technology will benefit people facing multi-organ 
transplants because of serious injury to their bodies; sufferers of 
degenerative diseases, and ultimately those who want a new lease on
life by transferring an old head onto a younger body.".... 


"I have devised the operation that would need to be done in humans," 
said White. "I have been to autopsy rooms and dissecting rooms and 
examined the sort of incisions which would have to be made, and at
what level, and how the various vessels would need to be reconnected. 

"We are talking about an operation that could be done on humans.
Whether it should be done is another question." 

So far the bodies pumping blood through the transplanted brains have 
remained completely paralysed because researchers have been unable to 
reconnect the nerve fibres from the spinal cord in the body to the 
brain. 

The brains can think and are conscious, but cannot communicate with the 
limbs. "I have no doubt this treatment will be available in the public
arena within the next 25 to 30 years," White said. "There will be a lot 
of ethical and moral arguments, but I think they are inappropriate.  What 
we are trying to do here is to prolong life. The human spirit or soul is 
within the physical structure of the brain. I don't think it's in your
left arm or anywhere else." 

However, he admitted the definition of brain death would have to be 
altered to allow bodies, possibly those in a persistent vegetative 
state in which there was still some brain stem activity, to be used
as donors." ....

"Peter Hamlyn, a leading neurosurgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 
London, who helped set up the British Brain and Spine Foundation, said
the work was cruel and irrelevant. "...
[comment: and penning animals for life in order to slaughter them is
not, I suppose?]...

"Your head might as well be in a jar as attached to another body. The 
fact that it is tied to a body acting simply as a pump would just be
an inconvenience because you would have to drag the body around. 
[comment: he completely ignores the fact that successfully reattaching
the spinal column may well be only a matter of time and technique]

"There might be a few cranks who would want it done, but for normal 
people the whole point of having a brain is that it interacts with the
body," he said. 

Other ethicists and theologians are worried that the technology could
be exploited for cosmetic life extension. [ comment: "cosmetic life
extension"? Sounds like an oxymoron to me]

"It is indicative of the disastrous route that Western medicine is 
taking," said Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical 
Ethics. "Is any individual so important to society that we should 
tolerate attempts to lengthen their existence in a way which most
people would find abhorrent?" 

David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, said he was concerned by the 
social trend represented by head transplant research. "I do get more and 
more alarmed that people refuse to see limits. To try to put a head on
a different body would be totally destructive of the personality. I
would sooner be totally dead than half and half."

Randy   
Cryonics: Gateway to the Future?
http://members.wbs.net/homepages/c/r/y/cryofan1.html             
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