What Happened To The First Human Head Transplant? (Feat. Medlife Crisis)
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 27. 05. 2024
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In 2015, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero announced that he intended to perform a human head transplant within a few years, and even more shockingly, he had a volunteer for the almost guaranteed-to-be-lethal procedure: a Russian man named Valery Spiridonov. What happened to this crazy plan? And what would it actually take to perform a human head transplant?
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LINK LINK LINKS
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_G...
unos.org/transplant/history/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
f.io/j66GT-Pz
www.weirdhistorian.com/russia...
news.stthomas.edu/publication...
f.io/cdiwI5tQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_...
people.com/human-interest/val...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...
âą EDDIE IZZARD - DRESS ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...
www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...
www.newscientist.com/article/...
f.io/cdiwI5tQ
nationalpost.com/features/hea...
ideacity.ca/video/william-sik...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
âą William Sikkema Head...
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...
www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...
people.com/human-interest/val...
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
1:57 - Luigi Galvani
3:30 - Transplant History
6:48 - Sergio Canavaro
12:27 - HEAVEN Protocol
17:18 - Polyethelyne Glycol
22:18 - Sponsor - Factor - VÄda a technologie
I was against getting a brain transplant,
but then I changed my mind.
I see what you did there...
đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł
Boooooo lol đ
đđđ
Too good ! Lol
imagine brain transplants though, one second youre flying through your windshield, the next youre waking up in a body that just isnt yours.
And a medical bill from the 200 surgeons that operated on you.
@Shinobubu You better have good insurance⊠or maybe you can just pass that debt off to the half-alive person your head has been grafted on to? Interesting legal questionâŠ
Yeah waking up in a body that isn't yours but you also can't move a thing! đ©
whose insurance policy would it apply to? đź (doesn't matter, they'd deny coverage regardless)
Who would donate their body? Imagine you wake up in a body of a serial killer
As someone in the medical field , the thought of being able to repair spinal damage would be world changing. This would save so many people from long term complications and deaths. Also, it would be a major step to other neurological conditions!
Do you guys in the medical field look into dmso for the spinal cord?
I saw a video recently where they regrew a person's optic nerve and replaced the eye using stem cells. The future is here.
It. Would prob be held over the general publicâs head too. Ever seen repo man? Nobody gonna be able to afford it and then they will own you, financially, or take it backâŠ
@@xblackdogrunsxlink?:0
They neurolinks they are perfecting now are going to be miraculous to so many people's lives. It could make permanent spinal cord injuries a thing of the past. Overriding the block in transmission of the nerve by placing an electronic bridge to restore communication. It is absolutely amazing technology.
The brain transplant reminds me of that one Cyanide and Happiness short with patients repeatedly riding a motorcycle off a hospital roof because the same brain is being transplanted to other patients
â€đđđđđđ„đđ„đ„„đđđ«đJesus loves you
Ommgg blast from the past
My wife heard 22- headed dog, and I had to explain it was actually 20 2- headed dogs.....she was still horrified.
Well that's even more heads, so she should be MORE horrified!
Animal experiments don't bother me at all, forward progress in the name of science.
@@JamesCavender-me6ei it's ok to bother you less, but "not at all" is taking it too far.
Empathy good. Sacrifice wisely.
@@JamesCavender-me6ei Volunteer to be a human subject then. Shouldn't bother you at all, since even more progress will be made than would be with animals.
Its called a body transplant. Not a head transplant. The part you are getting is a body. The mans not getting a new head. Hes getting a new body!!!!
In January I would have thought this guy was a madman. In February I became more aquainted with my neighbor who has ALS. I learned he didn't have nearly as much care as he needed and i began helping 2-3 times a day. I took care of some simple medical and biological needs, basic meals and some... Herbology, which is legal in my state. My point is is that since Febuary his deteoration has been drastic. We just got him an EyeGaze device last week to help him speak. 2 weeks ago the family brought in hospice. If you asked him "Hey, man, do you want to volunteer for this crazy new experiment?" I think he would say yes. He knows he's dying, but if all he had was a few hours to play the drums again (he was amazing) I think he would take it.
Thank you for sharing this. It's an excellent example of how all humans should treat their neighbors. (And everyone.) I wish it were the rule, instead of the exception. Thank you for being awesome!
Yeah thanks for sharing. I wouldnât blame anyone for being desperate for a solution in that situation.
Becky is helping her ALS neighbor with biological needs? Iâm sure he thanks you lol
Sorry sorry, I have the brain of a 14y/o so I must make joke when I think of jokeâŠ
But real talk, your neighbor is lucky to have a neighbor who is willing to help. You are very kind
Not enough good people like you in this world.
please look into L-arginine and als, It slowed and in some cases reverses als ITS A cheap supplement available literally everywhere.
If I recall correctly, Valery volunteered for this surgery for the reasons you mentioned - he had a pretty well informed and realistic attitude toward it. As someone with a chronic illness, while I don't think I can fully fathom what volunteering for something for this would be like, I did relate at least to his attitude about it and what he said. I am so happy to hear that he is doing well, and found happiness. There are plenty of disabled folks with hot spouses, some of them have been generous enough to share their experiences of what life is like being a disabled person with a life and not merely a sad or "inspirational" story, which its pretty cool.
i hope youre happy
âThere are plenty of disabled folks with hot spousesâ was so out of left field lmao
The dog experiment is so hard to see and I am glad it was censored. I saw the dog experiments years ago and it broke my heart to see the animals in that way. I know science comes first over ethics for some but I am very sensitive to animal cruelty or maltreatment. Thank you very much!!
Yeah I went to Latvia and they had the dogs on display in a medicine museum and that was the only time I ever felt uncomfortable about something... that was really disturbing
I have serious ethical issues with this kind of experiment. I had a hard time putting my dog through surgery to have an eye removed because it was already blind and had glaucoma. The thought of how she mustâve felt afterward really unsettled me, and that was a medically beneficial surgery! These experiments though, how are they not considered animal cruelty? I also question the ethics of a head transplant in general. Thereâs so much we donât know about how the brain interacts with the body, so how can we justify putting even a willing human through that? As one of the interviewees said, âthere are things worse than death.â The thought makes my skin crawl. I think maybe one day it could be ethically justified, but for now it seems like we know too little.
"science comes first over ethics" Nope nope nope nope.
@@spiritofhyrule8131 They are animal cruelty plain and simple. Scientists get away with it because most people don't give a shit. Same thing as factory farming.
This man tried his best to save your weak hearts from shedding tears. See joe Scott did you justice. Meanwhile all our demented twisted sadistic selves wanted to see all the pictures of 2 headed dogs
I just watched watched a video about consciousness in decapitated heads, and the algorithm sent me here 54 seconds after upload.
Same here!
One of Simmon Whistler's channels?
I thought of Joe immediately upon seeing Simonâs videođ
Joe did a video on the same subject years ago.
Don't pay too much attention to the predictions on post decapitation consciousness.
Even if you transplant the head perfectly onto the body, there is a high likelihood that the body will just reject the head. We need to first figure out how to make the body accept transplant organs without just using immunosuppressants.
So true! People are completely glossing over the fact that transplanting only a kidney is not always successful. The patient also ends up on immunosuppressive medications, which puts them at greater risk of other disease and infection.
Yep, the arms will just reach up and RIP it right off!
I was thinking about this too. And even in the case that we somehow magically make the body accept the head (which, like you said, would be very unlikely since organ transplants are already so dicey with immunosuppressants), I wonder if there would be issues with body dysmorphia caused by being in a body that is LITERALLY not your own. Even if you're transplanted on a body that's similar to yours (same sex, similar build, skin tone, etc), there's still going to be differences. Maybe that wouldn't be as big of an issue as I'm thinking, but body dysmorphia can happen over such small things, having an entirely new body seems like something that could cause it.
@@stagewrong6492 when people lose digits and limbs, they often experience something called phantom pain. Apparently it can be chronic and severe. So yes, people may experience body dysmorphia as well as phantom pain throughout their whole body.
But for people who want to try this procedure, usually the alternative is death anyway. So I imagine they would still give it a try if there was a chance it would work, even with all the awful side effects.
â@@stagewrong6492I imagine it could be helped with exercise and physical therapy. gradually getting used to the body through relearning movement might do some good
For anyone curious, CZcams does indeed let people show the two headed dog in their videos. I've seen it posted here many times. Here's the rub: it will age restrict the video containing said two headed canine and probably not let you monetize it. "Old CZcams" is still here, you just aren't gonna find that kind of content randomly anymore because it's all age restricted, which kills it in the algorithm, which is why this dude doesn't show it. Not a knock, most people these days making these slickly edited video essays aren't doing it purely out of passion lol. This is their job, or in some cases they're at least hoping to make it their job. Gotta pay for that production and pump that viewer count up! And I wouldn't have stumbled upon this video.
They can't even fix the bulging disc in my back & they are seriously talking about head transplants? đ
Sounds like you need a head transplant
Maybe Canavaro can help change your mind
They probably do way more good with this by NOT actually performing head swaps, but with the knowledge and power to do so, they could repair spinal breaks that paralyze people. If you can reattach a spinal cord you've severed on purpose, you should be able to repair one that was accidentally severed. And THAT would be HUGE.
As a scientist who worked in neuroscience...spinal injuries are never a knife-like cut...typically a crush or pulled apart which is much different. Also, time is of the essence.. the body quickly responds to the injury and sets up chemical and physical barriers which hinders repair. Even if they cut them nicely and put them together a lot of connections will be wrong..like putting to 1000 wire cut cables together with a pool of solder. Some relearning may be possible, and enough may be ok to allow survival but it could be a painful strange existence. That said a lot of progress has been made and what used to be impossible is now possible. Thus, research should still continue as new technologies appear.
@@scottsluggosrule4670 I'm not saying it would be easy or simple. I'm simply saying... if they can do what they're trying to do... BIG IF... but if... then they would probably be far enough along to fix the injuries AS WELL. The human body is quite capable, so who knows what might be possible once the spinal cord injury is reset. Not saying it would be perfect... but there are many levels of "any improvement is better" that I think people would be happy to reach.
armchair scientists on the youtube comment sections after 12 years of rigorous experimentation and research be like
No a severed spine on purpose is SO different from one severed by accident.
Severing on purpose would be a clean cut. Accidental could be a nasty tear that would be super difficult to reattach.
They did this with rats, and the rats got around 90% mobility back. The body simply retrained itself for the new spinal connections. And any damage to the spine could be corrected by simply cutting above and below the existing damage and replacing it with the synthetic replacement. I'm sure a paraplegic or a quadriplegic would be happy with 90% mobility back versus none. And this was all done before Christopher reeves died. He famously said they've got the technology to do it then. I'm sure in all these years they've made significant improvements. Also, you should do a video on the Italian doctor who was experimenting on fetus transfers from a natural womb to an artificial one. He used goats. They were successful. I remember reading about this in the early 90's. Somehow, he and his research were never mentioned again.
The spinal cord repair would change so much in the medical field. Once I see promising results on that we can talk of head transplants.
Spinal cord repair would change millions of lives overnight. It's not the complete end goal obviously, but it's prospectively a huuuuuge step.
Sadly, these sorts of fields and breakthroughs have regular hype cycles. Kinda like how fusion is always 30 years away, but some break through means it's now always only 20 years away lol.
It's seriously hard to overstate how big spinal cord repair would be though. You're nearing the (physical) medical end game, there isn't a whole lot left that can't be [reasonably] done via surgery. Again though this all requires tons of assumptions like high success rate, affordability, access, technology, etc.
Ummm seems like we are already talking about head transplants đ€
@@JerzeyGEMS Can't have a cake without knowing how to make a cupcake/having flour.
I mean it seems like the only reason you would do it currently, would be if the person's already paralyzed and needed multiple new organs. So then it would be just a matter of easier to switch the body instead of moving all the organs... đł
Thatâs what I was going
I have an "unusual" perspective on this because I've attended a surgical neuroseparation (beheading).
I'm involved in cryonics, and once had an opportunity to assist (in a peripheral capacity) in the initial steps of a cryosuspension. The patient was a neuro (head only), so after the initial washout and cooling, where the patient is put in an ice bath and attached to a heart lung machine which is used to replace most of the blood with the initial cryoprotectants, it was time for, well, the beheading.
I'm very aware of the common perception of cryonics, but having looked deeply into it, followed the research for decades, and gotten to know many of the key people involved, I'm an unflinching supporter. But even in the context of seeing it as a potentially lifesaving technology, the actual vertebrae separation was hard to watch. Heads aren't designed to come off, and it is NOT like in samurai movies! I'm proud to have been involved in a small way in giving this stranger a chance of living in the future, but if I ever meet him there he owes me a beer.
I know that most people think that cryonicists are kooky, but while cryonics is speculative, but it makes sense if you accept the possibility/likelihood of the technology required to repair and receive cryonauts (yes, that's the term) being developed in the reasonable future. However, these people are claiming to be able to transplant heads TODAY, and that's provably bat shit crazy!
It's not any more batshit crazy than freezing a dead body or head and hoping that some magic tech in the future will bring them back to life.
With A.I. that might be happening sooner than later
10:45 Eddie Izardâs stand up special was one of the funniest acts IâVE EVER SEEN!
âDo you have a flag?â đđđđđ
But do you? đ no flag no country!
But sir, they've got a flag.
My brain has 2 cells left, and they're not in a committed relationship.
đđđđ you win the internet today
My one brain cell is widowed
I'm down to 1 and I'm not giving it up.
More like fighting for a third place
When you described them âlabelingâ the nerves, muscle, and blood system, I canât help but imagine them doing it like a car stereo using masking tape on each wire and a sharpie to label each connection đ€Ł
We all have been there
Yeah I was thinking of all those tags hanging off everything
As long as it's not done by a Network Technician :P Good luck debugging that rat's nest :D
There are about 650K +/- 100K nerve fibres coming out of the spinal chord (couldn't find the number in a single cross section). labelling could take a while
I pictured a nurse handing the dr those little strips of white tape with black numbers electricians use
Wow super happy for the dude who was originally gonna get the head snip! Glad he found love :)
I remember the face transplant. I am a emergency medical person, I had a nightmare that I had a scene where I had a decapitation that I was desperate to save. I woke up so confused and questioning everything I know.
This is crazy to think someone is looking to do this with any urgency.
I'm so glad he decided to tell people to skip forward rather than not talking about it at all
I don't know the clinical term, but almost 15 years ago, my shattered elbow was repaired using "nano sugar sticks" as an experiment here in Denmark. Only study i could find on it, was done on rats. Worked! Elbow has around 80% mobility
Wow!
Very happy for you, hope the procedure helps a ton of other people, thanks to you, too!
Thanks for this video! I did a project on it back in 2015 and haven't heard anything more from it since, this was awesome to hear what happened since and where things kind of are. Great job, and super well done!
I'm really glad to hear that the guy who had initially volunteered for the transplant is in a stable condition and married with kids. I can't fault him for having been interested in such an experimental procedure since I'm sure it's extremely difficult to handle having a degenerative illness, but I'm so happy to hear that he's doing well now.
"Would you mind telling me who's brain I DID use?"
"Abby.... Someone.."
Hahahahaha Abby-Normal!
YESSSSS!
"What hump?"
Good one đ§
Lol! Young Frankenstein!
at least Abby was normal đ, although normal is subjective
"Yeah, he dropped out of the surgery."
Good for Valery!!! That. Is. A. WIN!
I think marrying⊠that. Thatâs a much bigger W than staying in a paralyzed body. That being said, I get where heâs coming from.
Sure, but that won't advance the science required to save people in his condition (and many more others suffering with others) from their trapped lives. So... where's the win?
In the fact that you've successfully dehumanized the doctor because he's lacking ethics? Ethics based on what? The same ethics of millions of doctors who studied forbidden or macabre science at some point done by a person willing to push the boundary?
Boy... do i have some bad news for you... if you think ANY of the medical procedures in use today EVER started as clean procedures without a single ethical concern... or religious one.
None of them are clean, they've just been white washed by time and ignorance. Is the doctor the one who'd get this clicked in? More than likely not, but is your thinking Bull? Yup. Because you lack the context and only go by what you've been spoonfed.
Yeah, bro is clearly living his best life, and I'm totally rooting for him!
It feels silly to be just gaping and wondering how they did it, but I'd still love to know what makes this all workfor them on an extremely practical and more emotional/internal level. I'm facinated by how he met this seemingly amazing person and how this entire relationship was obviously worth it for both of them, even with the massive communication and disability barriers and the million general problems the world puts disabled people through. If they both co-wrote something about it, or were willing to allow a documentarian to watch a week in their lives, I bet we'd discover that they are very lucky, but also that they are just such particularly well-matched people, with a lot of insight about fielding and avoiding frustration and a deep common grounding. I think we'd all wish our romantic/sexual relationships - really all of our relationships - could be this flexible. While head transplants remain impossible, I think we'd all like to get as much out of both these people's brains as they are willing to show us.
@@myragroenewegen5426cant believe i read it all but well said
Making a direct clone, then transferring the memories into the clone, would be a better way to go. Just like cloning & restoring a hard drive.
same memories â same consciousness
Except that it wouldn't be you
The risk is unbelievable, I would not have one unless I'm on deaths door
An issue I havenât heard anyone talk about is that itâs gotta be a lot easier to find people that want a new body than to find people willing to donate their body. Youâd have to find people that have just died whilst still having a body that can still be alive?
i was thinking the same thing, my best guess would be someone with brain damage on life support.
I was thinking that too, people want to keep their brain rather than their own body, plenty of people already change their body when they donât need to but arenât willing to change their brain
If you had a system set up for it it's not as impossible as you think. A *lot* of people die from just head injury, typically fairly healthy people on, say, motorbikes.
Perfect sample population.
People with mental health issues, suicidalâŠ. But those are entirely different moral issues
@@RobinTheBot There's a reason emergency room doctors call motorbikes "donorcycles."
14:54 reattaching a spinal cord would be HUGE if true, because aside from the head transplant thing (actually it would even become minor compared to the following), healing the spinal cord would help thousands of quadriplegic people who had spinal injury 18:03 21:17
If it actually worked, it reduce the need for head transplants too
I appreciate SO much how you put the sponsor at the end. RESPECT
THANK YOU! Iâve been trying to follow this for years but have been lacking. Thank you!
Great chatting to you via the medium of CZcams Studio! đ We should get our heads together more oftenâŠ
You really should, you make a great team!
Heads together hehe!
But don't lose your mind over it.
i like your clean shaven face better. your facial hair has really grown in.
That would be a banger :)
A year before Stephen hawking died I sent him a proposal to become the 1st head transplant. His assistant wrote back that Dr hawking liked it but declined. He sent me his last autographed book as his gift
This is so fucking cool
Big if true
So what was your plan if he said yes?
â@@trishoconnor2169 changing the wheels
But how did he sign it tho?
Finally nice to see you again in my feed again!!
I had been wondering this exact same thing one and off the past year or two. Now I know, thank you.
I saw "censored for CZcams" and immediately jumped over to Nebula to watch the uncensored version. I sure didn't need that while eating dinner.
Iâm getting queasy even without all of those details
Most of them are on CZcams already.
I want to watch it but I don't want to watch it. I wonder whether my curiosity will win out over my revulsion or the other way around.
@@jasonkinzie8835 I will say that it's not as gory as it could be. Horrific, yes. Gross, bloody, gory, not really.
I don't even wanna know.
In programming we call this a âtwo weeks projectâ
that cuts a little deep, but well played
what are you saying ? all programming projects are two weeks projects
â@@monad_tcpthere's two weeks, and then there's two *weeks* but in this case, yeah: two weeks is about right. đŠŒđŽđŸđâ ïž
âNo worries, Iâll have that form written and usable by the end of the monthâ
âFour month progress update: more than 25% of the fields now save correctly đâ
LOL! So true! Somebody announces that we have one scrum cycle to code, test, and deploy a new SW target. And they have a Christmas list of impossible feature sets. "They" must have talked to Santa instead of the engineers because they say it can't be done. Plop this all on the Program Manager's desk and tell the Project Manager to buckle up. Everything that goes wrong will be their fault. Two weeks! LOL
Thatâs so weird! I wondered about this for the past 2 or 3 days! Thanks!
This was a very informative video and I really enjoy your sense of humor! đ
I'm glad Valeriy has a new wonderful life. It may not be the life he expected to have, but it sounds like it's better than he hoped for.
Stephen Hawking also was married, two times, and fathered three children with his first wife, despite his devastating disability due to ALS.
I have no doubt though that all of this came from the publicity from volunteering for the head transplant to begin with. I bet you any money that's what first intrigued his wife.
âMY NAME IS FRANEKENSTEINâ made me bust out laughing. I must have seen that movie uncountable times cuz my first husband was obsessed with it and movies with that type of humor.
Abi-Normal
Frankenstein was actually the doctor, not the guy that was assembled from leftovers.
Uncountable times lmao oh lord
my ex wife hates her 1st husband, Thought the guy was alright myself !
In a very German voice! đ
I can't be the only one who read the title and thought "I wonder how that guy did with his new body..."đ
I gotta say I'm really happy for that man. All the best to him and his family.
I did a documentary of the first head transplant experiments in 1962 by Dr. White. His family gave me his original footage. I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. White on camera. The film DOES show graphic images of his experiments on monkies.
*monkeys
Where is this documentary?
@@ForageGardener where can we find this?
Please share the footage and the documentary! Ideally through a torrent!
â@@ForageGardener dunno where you can watch it, but with what was described, it should be "A. Head B. Body"
I can understand some people getting squeamish on the subject, but it is certainly nothing to lose your head over.
people are going to lose their minds over this pun
Its certainly something you need to control, if you want to get ahead.
đđđ
Thank you for comforting me with your comments đđŒđđŒ
Just don't get too ahead of yourself
Good to have you back on my feed âŒïž
Being able to fix spinal cords alone would be monumental.
A perfect video to watch right before going to bed, in a hospital, a day before a head transplant operation.
You too? Wild.
On my 1st flight ever, from North Carolina to Cancun, the in-flight movie was "La Bamba". No joke. Swear.
Good luck â€
â@tracybeeeee good luck â€
WOAH
There are worse things than death. Imagine surviving in Horror for 8 minutes post surgery ...
If you live in a country that makes euthanasia legal, then I think that you should be able to apply for this procedure. Everything was scary and "impossible" the first few times it was done. Even if you don't survive, you'll know that you are improving medical research. (And if you're a Vegan, imagine all the mice, rats, and monkey's lives you will save!)
There are worse things than death.
Imagine living in agony your whole life, only to have others so proudly claim that they know what is ethical, they know what is good for you and so you must suffer.
@@sujimayne Implying he's not in agony living in a wheelchair with his body wasting away?
@@jazzabighits4473 Imagine nerves wrongly attached, the pain would be excruciating. If you can push a button to self-kill yourself on a wrong surgery situation, all fine!
@@YochevedDesigns In Canada half the people who opt for MAID do so because they get no housing supports. They would need even more support after the "successful" head transplant.
It's one thing to reconnect severed nerves in a complex pre-existing system. You are just reconnecting one part of a component to the other part of the same component. These parts have always existed together and have evolved working together to control the same system, so their functionality only depends on reconnecting the two ends so signals can pass through again. It's a completely different thing to take one part of one system and try to connect it to a completely different system, which has evolved completely separately, with a different control system (brain) and maybe completely different locations for all the connections. No two nervous systems are structurally the same at the cellular level, which is where the reconnection has to take place. The neural pathways from the brain to the muscle are completely different in each individual and the control strategies used by each brain to achieve the same outcomes are not only completely different in each individual but also continuously change over time.
In the case of simply (relatively) reconnecting a severed spinal cord, you could reattach the larger structure with some kind of conductive medium at the join and it's possible that the appropriate nerve cells might reconnect because both ends of the same nerve would be reasonably close to each other in orientation. Sending signals down the nerve may reach the other appropriate end through the conductive medium and gradually the two ends might make a new connection. It's still rolling the dice, but if enough nerves make appropriate new connections, you might get some functionality back. The brain might also be able o work out new signal processes if nerves reconnect differently than before due to it's neuroplasticity, but I'm guessing there would need to be sufficient overlap of the two processes to salvage something. Obviously, we can't do that very successfully yet.
Connecting a brain and spinal cord to a completely different nervous system would have to go through each axon and somehow identify which axon from the recipient spinal cord corresponded to an axon in the donor spinal cord, which may be located somewhere completely differently in the spinal cord or use a different combination of axons. There may not be a very good match between the nerve axons used for each task, their location or sensitivity to stimulus. Each spinal cord would have evolved separately with their own separate structures and processes for making things happen. It's a whole extra universe of complexity and the new brain would probably have to develop new control strategies for every single nerve in every single task, even if you were able to match up axons. It might be too different for the neuro-plasticity of a brain to adapt to. Soon, it may be easier to upload a humans brain patterns into a synthetic substitute - a synthetic brain and body.
I was just talking to my fiancĂ© the other day, wondering what happened with this whole situation. Thank you for the extremely informative video. â€
Just a side note here, I am overjoyed that you chose to use footage from Young Frankenstein instead of any of the other actual Frankenstein flicks. Well done.
Thankyou! I was trying to find which movie that clip was from. Gene Wilder is so recognisable!
@@rendragyn Yep, you're welcome! RIP Gene Wilder.
Young Frankenstein IS an actual Frankenstein flick. It's THE Frankenstein flick.
@@yourhandlehere1 Amen, friend.
The only Frankenstein that treated his son right
If my head was transplanted on another body, I would totally introduce myself as the person whose body I have and tell everybody they switched this smart head on me.
I'd do the same, but say they gave me this dumb one...
â@@TheSpoilerist
That's likely for the best.
Insulting your life saving donor is a bit beyond my personal taste, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.
Me too in the Simonverse
Just pretend you actually are STILL the other guy.... trip up neuroscientists for a while, saying that you've got the memories of the new head, but you KNOW you are the original person. What could they do to prove you wrong?
"...smart head.."? How would you know the body didn't have a smarter head than yours?
This was really good. Thanks for the wonderful info with a good laugh
Thanks for posting
I find things like this surgery so funny. As a microbiologist I see this as a novelty with no practical use in the future. By the time the technology exists to perform this surgery, there will likely be methods to treat all or most of the ailments that this surgery would be used to treat, and it would be done without the extremely unnecessary risk.
Anything we should keep our eye on ??
Fight fight fight!!!!
@@logank444 ?
@@nicodesmidt4034 mostly genetic treatments and synthetic biology to create novel methods for medication delivery/precision delivery.
Uuuuuh. You do realize that all this stuff is almost possible. Nerve reconnection is a thing. It would just need to be done on a bigger scale. Maybe use automated microsurgery to reconnect the individual spinal nerve bundles.
Meanwhile to actually have brain uploads and in vivo genetic editing which would be needed for a lot of these conditions, that would be still decades away.
I'm relieved to know that Valery dropped out because his condition stabilized and that he found love. I was following this somewhat closely years back and the narrative seemed to be that medical professionals got to him and explained that: if he goes through with it, there's a potential for him to go completely insane and how it was going a fate worse than death lol... Also, I remember cavanero talking about this. He said something like, it's feasible to reduce the spinal cord in a way that it would be less work to reattach it but still maintain its functionality... The whole thing is just bonkers. This was such a cool video, I really enjoyed your insight into this because I was kinda wondering how all this panned out. It's been crickets for quite a few years.
Thank you for the warning about expermients on animal. As someone who gets nightmares from that sort of things but loves your videos, thank you for taking the time to warn us! Greetings from Argentina
Best one in a long time! Bravo...
15:39 âCanavero and all the other head casesâ - subtle and sly so I love it!
The engineer with the beautiful wife made me smile. I'm glad he chose her instead of being an experiment.
Same here, Iâm very happy for him. I hope he gets to live a long and happy and comfortable life.
Dude must have an absolutely amazing personality. Good job, man.
Not that being an experiment of this caliber isnt noble, its just that now that his life seems to go well then why risk it. I personally think giving your body to science is some of the most noble thing you can do for humanity.
@@BeyondAldebaranthatâs generally what women like in a husband plus are you saying heâs not attractive because heâs in a wheelchair??
@@sionandjess Yes and ya'll don't even know what you want for supper. How you gonna tell me what kind of man women want?
We can't even repair a severed spine, and people thought a head transplant was possible.
As an IT professional, I can tell you this is insane. Not just the microsurgery and all that, each body defines its own neuro pathways to do everything. So, even if you make the biological parts work, the dude will likely go insane, as happened with face transplants.
In other words, it's more like moving your Windows hard drive to new hardware than moving your Linux hard drive to new hardware. With Windows, the HW drivers and such specific to that system are in the OS. Linux is more general.
Transplants such as these, combined with the recent eye transplant on a blind man could completely change millions of people's lives. (Until corruption and greed kick in and make it inaccessible for those who truly need it, of course.)
exactly
Imagine a future buisness where the poor can eat healthy and work out to sell their body to the rich to feed their family for a few years
Oh boy, you're gonna flip out when you hear about the American Healthcare System
@sweet999dark In Warhammer 40,000, the counter-faction with the human race are not the alien species but the antihuman faction specifically engineered to bring dark energy to overwhelm the material world.
I am one of those antihuman proponents, I want the poor people to eat each other via Soylent Green-equivalents while they are being used via manipulation (subliminal messaging, propaganda, mass media, dis/misinformation campaigns etc.) to induce hatred against each other so that their control over natural, human and/or mental resources the rich people so coveted gets coveted.
Once I learnt the meta of life, the only way to win the game of life, is not to participate in it.
Even without corruption and greed, the trillions of dollars for that have to come from somewhere.
Honestly the biggest problem isnât the spinal cord issue - it would be rejection by the hostâs immune system. You can easily die from just a mis-matched kidney transplant. There is no way a complex tissue system like an entire head could be stabilized and the immune system arrested enough to allow the organism to continue living. There are just too many cellular responses systems involved and rejection would be inevitable.
Doesn't brain have an entirely separate immune system due to the blood-brain barrier?
mental image of the head being ejected off the body like a cork
@@rickd650 lol
We have plenty of immunosuppressant drugs that could do the job these days.
You'd probably have to nuke the bodys immune system and then repopulate it with the heads original bodys
Reconnecting a spinal cord to its own severed mate is one thing. Connecting it to one that grew in another body is utterly unlikely ever to work. Not only will two spinal cords never actually be quite the same diameter, but the fibers within them, which each carry one endpoint's signal to the appropriate part of the brain, will never be arranged quite the same. The spine is massively parallel. It's not a single wire that carries a lot of signals sequentially. Every parallel signal needs to go to the right place in the brain. It'd be like connecting HDMI and DisplayPort, where you need an adapter that correctly attaches all of the randomly arranged lines from each end.
Joe đđđ the choir of you going âwe knewâ đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł gold †love you lol
âI ainât got nobodyâŠ.â
That's no way to get a head!
We know who "donated" the head. But who wants to "donate" the body.
Igor!
"Abby ... something ..."
Yakataka yakata tah tah
I will tell you that every time I'm in a major incident and I need stitches or Staples I request super glue. I do this because when I was 16 and I had stitches it's scarred really bad and I got violently ill after the stitches were removed. I was in a major accident about 2 years ago and I had a head contusion so I requested super glue. The doctor looked at me funny and I asked him what super glue was made for. I then asked him if he had medical grade super glue which he replied yes I do. He told me it was going to hurt and I told him I would rather a little pain now than a scar later. That contusion was bigger than the first one when I was 16 but you can feel the stitched contusion that was smaller and you can't even see or feel the spot where he super glued. The hair even grew back. My point is that cyanoacrylate is some amazing s***.
Think itâs just your body & the way of heeling, maybe also 16 year old you took less care of the wounds in your daily life, knocking it or picking it or even scratching⊠I have a cut on my leg that was glued back & itâs from about 12 years old & itâs still a bump & visible.
As a 39yo who had abdominal surgery for the 3rd time and got a horrible infection in the stitches... I wish they'd glued me too. (They were dissolving stitches. I cut them, which solved the issue, because I could clean them properly then.)
Great video. đ
This went right over my head
This is fascinating. You did a great job of pulling out the logic from fantasy. I have had nerve ablation surgery to help with pain from late stage Lyme Disease. The amount medicine DOESN'T know about nerves was unsettling. "The nerves will find each other again somewhere between 3 months and 3 years from now. We don't like to sever the nerves from their source completely because they have a tendency to 'find' the wrong loose ends." This was at Stanford. My nerves found each other and got back to creating pain within 6 weeks. I declined further treatments.
You are so right about the monkey who was claimed to have had a severed spinal cord repaired. I call bs. Yesterday, I was having a debate with a stranger online (as you do). This person was insisting that I treat my dog's renal failure with crushed pineapple instead of the medication from his vet. "Pineapple gets humans off dialysis!" Well, what are you doing online talking to me? Get on the horn with The Cleveland Clinic and put out the word that the kidney transplant list can be tossed in the trash! (eyeroll)
I have nerve ablation on 4 nerves on each side of my lower spine every 3 months. That's approximately how long they take to reconnect, though sometimes it happens slightly sooner. This is the latest in pain management attempts that started after my back surgery that put a cage in. Started with trigger point Injections , then stronger guided Injections at 4 points on each side, and now the ablations. I don't know what the next treatment will be when these cease to work but for now, along with pain meds, these at least provide some relief. There's definitely not enough known about the science of nerves.
Just imagine a head being kept alive, but in terrible pain!
Why donât they just give you copious amounts of opioids?
@@Sniperboy5551 they do but they barely make a dent in the pain. Donât know why they donât work enough for me but they donât.
â@@Sniperboy5551 Opiates only help with short-term pain. When used over long periods, they actually increase the body's sensitivity to pain because the body compensates for the dulled signaling. It also usually causes addiction and gastrointestinal issues when used long-term.
There's a reason there has been an opiate crises in the US -- opiates being used for long term pain treatment was a disaster and didn't even help with chronic pain for most people.
So opiates are best for recovering from surgery or acute injury. It's a good thing that we're developing new technologies for chronic pain
Medlife Crisis is one of the most underrated channels on this platform. Glad to see him in this collabđđ
My body really really really wants a different head. So I'm very much looking forward to the breakthrough in this.
Thank god he didn't go through with it đđ» so happy for him and his family. I really was dreading what had happened to him at the start of this video x
Itâs definitely âbody transplant.â
100%
Or a âhead/body transplant,â I guess.
When undergo a heart transplant you basically throw away your heart and take someone elses heart.
This is your replacing your body, so its a body transplant.
Head transplant just makes it sound so sensational and I imagine news would prefer "Head Transplant" as headline for more impression.
Might not even have to fully solve the nerve problem.
This is the next step for neuralink.
@@jtjames79 Nothing neuralink does is even remotely in that ballpark.
The only one who claimed stuff like that is Musk, who knows literally nothing about anything other than pump and dumps and how to lie about products.
12:14 'HEAVEN protocol' I thought it was called that because it would take you there if you volunteeredđ
Edit: holy cow 156 likes? Tysm!â
Holy shit, I just realized why the anime is called heavenly delusion... the main protagonist goes through something like this.
@@PrimeCo129thatâs a crazy connection if so lol
Great content and presentation. Great channel. đŠđș đ
I wasn't going to bother trying the head transplant but then I realised I was alone... I had... No body
Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein wasn't the monster, wisdom is knowing that he was.
Idk, this is a good line in reference to this situation, but Frankenstein was more about the townspeople and how they were monsters
True, but it was also about the hubris and blind ambition of science and scientists. Frankenstein succeeded at being a scientist and then promptly failed at taking responsibility by abandoning the monster to his tragic fate.
@@mollydooker9636 I like to sum it up as: "Clever surgeon. Terrible father. Turns out both disciplines were equally important to what he was attempting."
True wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein was the doctor, and his creation didn't have a name other than "the monster".
Thats actualy a very smart way of saying that
As someone with some expertise in this area and having spoken to neuroscientists who very specifically specialize in the mechanics of spinal cord injury and repair - this is PURE FANTASY - and will almost certainly never be possible. The reason for this is extremely simple - well there's two parts to it. The first part is understanding that humans develop their nervous systems by functional connections in practice - not by design/plan. Nerves don't 'go to' particular parts of the body when they're growing - instead a crapton of nerves get sent out in that direction - and they're going to hit the required targets at the end - but you have no idea beforehand which nerves will get to which targets. The central nervous system then operates backwards it needs to achieve a function and it'll obviously match and pair with the nerves that achieve that functional outcome. All those other nerves and neurons that don't achieve function? They die off over time - when we talk about your brain 'maturing' over time this is mostly what's being referred to just more periphery - where an absolutely massive proportion of your neurons are pruned leaving you with just the stuff you're actively using. So now think about the spinal cord....
Imagine cutting into a big fat communications cable, with literally MILLIONS of individual fibreoptic lines in it... and you have NO IDEA which one is which, you might have a decent idea where roughly something will be but if it's not 1:1 it's a potential disaster, it wont work... if you were to slice that giant cable perfectly, and then move it apart like 1mm using precise machines, then try to move it back to re-create a connection.... chances are even then you'd not get it exactly right. Now imagine if instead of a consistent and fairly durable communications cable you were dealing with floopy floppy squishy flesh goo that has a tendency to recede, move, leak, or begin to die when cut.... okay that seems near impossible even when you begin with a perfectly connected spinal cord... but what if they were totally different... if there was no way to position it to match 1:1 even hypothetically with magic involved.
That's only one part though - what really takes it from 'inconceivable' to 'impossible' is the second part.... and that's material limits. To put it simply - our understanding of physics would have to be effectively completely wrong in order to allow for any material/tech that could bridge the gaps between neurons needing to be reconnected. It's the same issue that makes brain-machine-interfaces that can effectively restore function impossible. The required electrode density would have to break our understanding of chemistry completely in order to be possible. Neurons are not wires - they do not work in the same way wires do. Neurons don't have the same problems that wires do when it comes to interference or cross-talk, and the material requirements for what it takes to send particular levels of current and voltage would necessitate an amount of material that would make them functionally unusable due to scale.... and like... everything else... ahhh it's a bit big of a topic to summarize super concisely -.-... why do I do this đah well just passionate about this stuff I guess and if you are too you've got enough so gonna go make food now lol
Wouldnât that first part be cleared up with a better scanner? Better model maker. And Iâm sure a machine could quickly and efficiently (eventually) be created to help with this.
As for the second part. Seems like we need to invent a new type of human wire. Or be allowed to play around with nerve stem cells. And then those could be used instead of our inefficient wires
Lol at least thatâs my interpretation with no real biological background lol
Never say neverđȘ
Why are you absolutely sure that the brain couldn't rewire itself and figure out what all those new neural connections do? Sure, it's probably doomed to immediately self destruct as it's unable to control lungs,heart, digestive system, but fundamentally, the process is absolutely there, as we've all done it whilst being fetuses. Your point one is really more of not in our lifetime rather than never.
Point two is much better
I think you didn't get it, we need an artificial biological neck adapter in order to rewire the "pins" in the body to the correct dimensions of the brain and to put electrodes to allow controlling the body to keep it alive with the adapter, then we need an ion beam cutter to cut ATOMICALLY FLAT both the adapter's end and the head and then join them in a xenon atmosphere. Growing the neck adapter isn't so hard, the hard part is to orient the right filament to the right wiring.
â@@jaazz90 yes we are absolutely sure on this - neurons are not wires, they are functional - and those functions are spatial. It's possible due to proximity that a few could approximate a workable solution but that's maybe a few hundred out of tens of millions. The process of our development is not reversible or repeatable, you can't re-do it.
@@fss1704 oh no donât worry, i definitely didnât get it. And i understand (abstractly) how creating something the body can use efficiently and effectively and painlessly would be extremely difficult.
(Iâm talking about the spinal cord to spinal cord here, not brain to spinal cord)
But back to my point, in reference to your âconnecting the right filament to the right wiringâ, that basically connecting part a with part a, yes? A very complicated map. I donât think it sounds impossible for a machine/scanner/model to identify linking nerves and then connect them.
Im thinking like how all roads look the same and meander wherever, but they all have an individual name or identifiers. Even if the road was cut with an earthquake or even teleported somewhere else a machine or person could still technically find out where it originated from (their are people who can look at an image of a road and tell you exactly where in the world itâs located)
So a machine might (in the future) be able identify which nerve road goes to which nerve road.
Now i donât know if a machine would be able to identify everything fast enough before everything below the severing dies, especially with the way op describe nerves as rooting out and finding a place rather thanfollowing a preset architectural roadmap but ya never know
The "I can sum it up in three words" joke is fricking hilarious. That momentary pause just sells it so well.
The use of Eddie Izzard's "Cake or Death" joke is pure comedic genius.
5:42 22-headed dogs - now thatâs something to see!
Itâs 20, 2 headed dogs not a 22 headed dog. That would just be too cool. A whole pack on one body!!!
@@gordonwybo898 I prefer my version, better mental image!!!
Straight to jail for that one
It is messed up.
@@gordonwybo898although the idea brings to mind the legend of the âCerberusâ that three headed dog of the underworld.
I fall asleep to Joe Scott. Please believe me when I say this is the highest compliment I could give a CZcamsr. A voice that cradles me to sleep is like a warm blanket.
I don't see this CZcamsr working for my sleep needs. I like Bedtime Stories and Disturban History. I guess I have a thing for British voices, and disturbing, violent true crime/ mystery type stuff.
Jose Scott's voice is the drug equivalent of heroin, but with all the benefits and none of the draw backs.
@@scottmichael1493 I don't think you've ever tried heroin.
I've wondered about this from time to time
The study of connection of spinal cord repair is intense work. Most rich ppl just want results without research. I'm scared for this humanity
As someone who struggles and has occasionally joked about needing a new body this video is particularly horrifying and fascinating. I'm going to be more careful about that kind of joke as I now realize there's always the chance one of my doctors might take me to seriously.
A Doctor can bury his mistakes and a weatherman can be totally wrong for days but I know too many people that had bad outcomes from a hospital
Hippocrates is pounding on the stone tablet with The Oath in anger
Be strong MRBrew, tough it out. Keep watching videos that have some educational/entertainment value to keep the old head sharp, you only get one
Great comment and makes one ponder
ADHD moment, I loved the Kepler 16b poster so much I looked it up only to find an entire collection on the NASA site. AMAZING!
Great video as well!
I feel like these sci-fi technologies that would need to be developed in order to successfully transplant a head would themselves solve most of the reasons anyone would _want_ a head transplant in the first place. Some kind of miracle nerve repairing technology would mean you could fix severed spinal columns, treat nerve-degenerating diseases, and transplant missing limbs or far better bionic prosthetics than we have today. Why transplant your head when you can much more easily repair your own body?
Greetings!
Brain transplant is old news. It was first performed by an American surgeon in 1968. I saw in a documentary called StarTrek.
Live long and prosper
Brain and brain! What is brain?! đ
When Joe said that this is almost been a decade and I remember it like it was like three years ago my heart sank. I am old.
I feel like the two-headed dog method is onto something when it comes to head transplants.
As someone that has lived paralyzed after a spinal cord injury in 2009 18:18 was immensely hard to hear. So disappointing.
If you could do the microsurgery (or have the magic glue) necessary to attach a head and body, you could do the microsurgery (or have the magic glue) to repair a spinal cord. That would obviate a lot of cases where a "head transplant" would make "sense" (whatever "sense" could be made about this whole thing). But what about the other cases? Seems the rejection issues would be challenging or overwhelming.
imagine the body rejects the head and you start rotting alive, or the opposite.
@@nahoj.2569 Yeah, it is hard to even think about how that would go. Would the brain shuts down then the body just stops working or would the organs shut down then the brain stop functioning? Or both simultaneously? Which ever, it seems half of a body getting used to a different other half would be a lot to ask biochemically.
"Two headed dog, two headed dog, I was working in the Kremlin with a two headed dog" -Vladimir Demikhov (or Roky Erikson probably)
Love Roky Erickson, RIP to a legend.
wasn't expecting some niche shit in this comment section lol. great song
â€
10:07 "... ....and she also has a Master's in Chemical Engineering".
...My friend you have MASTERED the art of the comedic pause!
Roky sure has a niche in my heart.
They've been able to re-fuse severed spinal cords using stem cells, and material for the growth of new tissues to rebuild and reconnect.
I remember watching a report on this many years ago (the material was basically the same that they used to grow the ear under the Vacanti mouse skin.)
After some time, the mice (who were completely severed mid-spine) were able to move their legs, then swim, then walk again with the rear legs.
While many articles seem to be around the end of the 2010s (2019, 2020), I feel like I first heard about it almost 20 years ago.
your performance style immediately makes me want to participate in a head transplant surgery
Since his cousin Tom retired at the end of 2023, these Joe Scott videos are the only way that I get my "low-key, off-beat, but informative video" fix. Love your work! :)
they are cousins? I can't seem to find a verification anywhere