Dennis, sorry to appear factious-but is it possible? Are there not a multitude of problems involved?

Stanley,

I bring the example up more for consideration as "a thought experiment". Would be highly complex, still theoretical, but has been discussed at least in the press over the past several years. Yet, if it were achievable, what would the research ethics surround the experiment be like?

Dennis

Dennis Mazur

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Present and past press discussions are included below.

-- “The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage,” Canavero said at a press conference in Vienna, the Telegraph of the UK reported.

1. Russian man volunteers for first human head transplant - CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/.../russian-man-volunteers-for-first-human-head-transplant/

Aug 29, 2016 - While severing someone's head and attaching it to another person's body sounds like something straight out of a science fiction or horror movie ...

2. Russian Billionaire Will Not Undergo Head Transplant After All – The ...

https://themerkle.com › News › Technology

Jul 28, 2017 - Russian Billionaire Will Not Undergo Head Transplant After All ... Detaching a human'shead and attaching a different body while expecting the ...

3. Head Transplants: Sergio Canavero Says First Patient Will Be ...

www.newsweek.com/head-transplant-sergio-canavero-valery-spiridonov-china-2017-...

Apr 28, 2017 - ... longer be performed on Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man suffering from the ... “Because the head transplant will be conducted in China it's much easier ... so it will only be a question of time when Valery will get a new body.

Top stories

Past Discussions:

1. The First Human Head Transplant Has Been Scheduled For 2017

...www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/human-head-transplant

The First Human Head Transplant Has Been Scheduled For 2017 ... the most important part of the procedure – the head will be transferred to the donor body. 2. Human head transplant: Controversial procedure successfully carried

...www.alphr.com/science/1001145/human-head-transplantCached

In real terms, it's a body transplant, as the head will be gaining a new body to control. ... believes it's possible and intends to conduct the first surgery in 2017. 3. Doctor Aims to Perform Head Transplant in 2017, Experts Remain

...abcnews.go.com/Health/doctor-aims-perform-head-transplant-2017-

experts.../story?...Similar Sep 15, 2015 - Doctor Aims to Perform Head Transplant in 2017, Experts Remain ... The technology allows for the body to be cooled during surgery and there ...

Dennis

Dennis Mazur

Ok. No problem with the question, Dennis, only about probability. Although this doesn't answer your question, I have read a few SF stories where this is the core motif-an individual's body ages and they search for an alternative, younger body in order to sustain their life, placing, of course their head (or brain) on or in the younger model. This is usually a rewrite of Frankenstein involving the harvesting of bodies. The novel itself presents a number of ethical queries on messing with nature, murdering for science and the integrity of corpses, godlike attitudes of scientists and physicians. The problem with the former hypothesis is that the brain ages and as yet nothing can stop its decline. A new body may not thereby affect alzeimers developing.

But, to the matter at hand-

We tend to see extending life as a prime action, driven by a number of paradigms, including 'not dying'. The right to life preserves living itself into individual focus. Dying has became an insult to human potential unless a person believes a heaven, especially tailored to their needs, awaits them-this in itself constitutes continued 'living' as death really means destruction and decay. Ethically, the loss of a life (the body) to preserve a life (head) can be ethically accomodated if the body is assessed as a gift. The drive to extend life is more powerful in this context than any ethics as to the loss of a life. If medical science is capable of such a transplant it therefore becomes ethically wrong not to do it.

As personality and intelligence are within the head/brain the individual's identity remainders within the head/brain not the body. Therefore ethical problems of say loss or removal of identity do not apply.

The acquisition of another's body to replace a diseased one has no ethical drive as the desire for life-extension overrides such considerations in a subject-object context. Ethics usually applies to subject, not object. Any sense of loss, mourning felt by family/friends of replacement body are ethically overridden by superior ethical claims to extended life.

The ethical breakdown above is external, accounting for other's reactions. The individual wanting such an operation would likely have to deal with cultural or religious ethics, if any. But what may be more difficult to overcome for a number of possible recipients is disgust at inhabiting another person's body. Not all of course. As part of the process, a recipient may be able to choose a donor through making a face to face choice, from videos or a catalogue..

RE: disgust at inhabiting [?!] another person's body

That is rather a Cartesian dualist way of putting the matter. I suppose some might be discomfited or distressed by feedback from an alien body. So, for example, we'd better not graft a male head onto a female body (even if it turned out for some physiological reason that that might be a better option) if the male comes from a culture that disparages women qua women.

As already suggested, grafting the head onto the spinal cord is not an option at present. However, we can infer from animal experiments that connecting the head to the blood supply of a donor body is (or nearly is) within the realm of present possibility. And there are situations in which the recipient of a donor body would not be worse off even though the head has no control over the body. If someone paralysed from the neck down is living a life that he regards as purposeful and worthwhile and wants to continue that life but all his organs are starting to fail, then a donor blood-supply body can extend that valued life (at least until the brain itself goes into extreme senescence).

What would Steven Hawking do?