• Question: What is your opinion on head transplants? Do you think they will be successful in the next few years? Do you think people would use them for cosmetic reasons and to live longer?

    Asked by Arun to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 9 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Vicky Bayliss

      Vicky Bayliss answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      Hmmm, interesting questions. Do you mean like taking someone’s head off and giving them a new body? I guess, my question would be, where would they get the body from? I suppose someone might have donated it if they had died from some cause which left their body intact but damaged their brain, but I imagine that is fairly rare.
      I can’t imagine that they will be able to grow bodies from scratch (minus the head) in the near future, because I imagine it would be pretty complicated to programme a computer to do the job of a brain in growing and maintaining a body.
      I reckon they are most likely to build a robot and transplant a head onto that…. scary.

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      This is absolutely terrifying! I can see how it would really help people who are paralysed or have a medical condition where a head transplant would really benefit them but I don’t know how successful it would be… and yeah, like Vicky said, getting someone to donate their entire body would be pretty rare… And if it was for cosmetic reasons how much would a procedure like this cost? Is it worth risking your life? I mean, for medical purposes it would be interesting to see if it could be achieved… but who is going to be the human Guinea pig?

    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      I am sure the technical challenges will be solved, so it will become a real issue in few years.
      I think that this is very close to cloning and in a sense almost more dangerous as would require a whole body to suddenly become available. Who is providing it???
      What I think will be more probable to happen, which will be more acceptable and also durable and easy to maintain, is a transplant on a full bionic body.
      There are a lot of progress considering all the efforts on creating cybernetic arms and legs for amputees. Adding a chassis for the body will be easy at that point and in a sense we already have them in robots such has the Honda one.

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