7 ms·

Reading all those different, excruciatingly difficult surgical steps it sounds like it would be just about easier to give him a robot body, Futurama-Nixon style

Reading all those different, excruciatingly difficult surgical steps it sounds like it would be just about easier to give him a robot body, Futurama-Nixon style.

maxerickson 10y ago
The head transplant boils down to 3 problems: microsurgery, nerve regeneration and immunotherapy. Each of which is incredibly complicated, but the understanding is there to do things like full hand transplants (they don't restore full function, but the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical). We have no idea how to artificially provide all the functions that the body carries out. We have some baby steps like dialysis, but how would the life support system deal with infections? Or take a look at the problems that various heart assist systems have with clotting and coagulation (blood likes to stick to the artificial surfaces).
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  "the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical" I don't think ethics works that way. Just because something is very useful doesn't necessarily mean that it's ethical. Nuclear weapons are a case in point. Few will deny that they're very useful and effective weapons, but many believe their use to be unethical, no matter how useful they are. Chemical and biological weapons, and cluster bombs are other similar examples.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - SamReidHughes 10y ago
    Fortunately we all understood this to be in the context of performing a medical operation.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Are you saying that usefulness trumps ethics in medicine but not in warfare? If so, why do you think that?
      - Gracana 10y ago
        Of course it doesn't "trump ethics." In the context of a hand transplant, the likelihood of the procedure resulting in a useful hand is a large part of deciding whether or not it's ethical. The likelihood of improved quality of life is weighed against the likelihood of pain and complications.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    My meaning was that hand transplants would (probably) be unethical if the result provided no function. The technique is good enough that the benefits outweigh the costs. Obviously they must also consider the other aspects of it ethical.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > "the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical" > I don't think ethics works that way. I'm pretty sure that they do. > Just because something is very useful doesn't necessarily mean that it's ethical. OTOH, for lots of things (and surgical operations with inherent risks are pretty solidly on this list) utility is certainly relevant to (and a certain level, a prerequisite for) an action to be ethical, even if it is not sufficient alone to determine that the action is ethical.
- jbrambleDC 10y ago
  you may find this interesting: https://medium.com/@JBramVB/the-rejection-of-the-human-condition-49fc722f1293#.ktqap976j https://medium.com/@JBramVB/the-rejection-of-the-human-condi... I discuss my thoughts on some of these things. would love to hear any opposing or agreeing views you have.
  - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    I disagree with that article completely. > We need our bodies and our internal organs to live Implies you can live without body? Neither mind, nor consciousness is live, that's why you literally don't live if you don't have body. There's no philosophical dilemma here - life must be able to replicate. Mind can't replicate. It's not alive. > 2. We must eat to survive Literally. A physical body, which is the only way to be alive, needs physical atoms to exist, and acquisition of the building blocks is called eating. > 3. We must die Only point I can semi-agree with. Life span can be reasonably extended. No immortality though. > 4. We must work to live Not even starting.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      What's wrong with #4? Assuming that we continue to require resources, then #4 will continue to be true. Granted: as technology improves, we need to work a lot less to achieve the same quality of life. But there's still a requirement to produce those resources; it is incumbent upon someone to work to produce them, be it a farm labourer or an engineer designing farm robots.
    - klodolph 10y ago
      I think it's not really interesting if you disagree with an article simply by using a different understanding of the same words. 1. "Body" in the paragraph means "the rest of the body, excluding the brain". It is not used to mean, "the entire body, including the brain". 2. This is incorrect. The acquisition of matter is not always called eating. I'm not talking about drinking—we can group that with eating—but there are alternative ways to acquire nutrients and there are also other ways to acquire matter that do not involve nutrients. Having a nutrient IV would not involve eating, and if you got a good source of nutrients this way, it would bypass many of the biological problems involving nutrient absorption through the GI tract. Problems with nutrient absorption in the GI tract account for a worrying number of health problems in older individuals. (You can also attach matter to your body with surgery.)
ergothus 10y ago
The trick is - most biological work we do consists of "fix enough things that the complicated and as-of-yet unreplicable biology takes over and manages the rest". Heck, advances like PCR and CRISPR are just applications of the same thing - We can't economically construct/deconstruct DNA strands, but biology has figured it out, so we piggyback on that. Sometimes we understand but don't have a more economical solution, sometimes we understand but can't replicate at all yet, and yet other times we only vaguely understand what's happening (and can't replicate). Regardless, this seems to be the march of modern medicine: The process of "observe, understand, create" is too slow when people are literally dying and suffering, so we stick in some "make best guess use of observations" in the middle. So yeah, getting a head to talk to the body is really hard and complicated - but doing everything a body does (including feedback too/from the head) is even harder.

Reading all those different, excruciatingly difficult surgical steps it sounds like it would be just about easier to give him a robot body, Futurama-Nixon style.

maxerickson 10y ago

The head transplant boils down to 3 problems: microsurgery, nerve regeneration and immunotherapy. Each of which is incredibly complicated, but the understanding is there to do things like full hand transplants (they don't restore full function, but the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical). We have no idea how to artificially provide all the functions that the body carries out. We have some baby steps like dialysis, but how would the life support system deal with infections? Or take a look at the problems that various heart assist systems have with clotting and coagulation (blood likes to stick to the artificial surfaces).

pmoriarty 10y ago
"the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical" I don't think ethics works that way. Just because something is very useful doesn't necessarily mean that it's ethical. Nuclear weapons are a case in point. Few will deny that they're very useful and effective weapons, but many believe their use to be unethical, no matter how useful they are. Chemical and biological weapons, and cluster bombs are other similar examples.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- SamReidHughes 10y ago
  Fortunately we all understood this to be in the context of performing a medical operation.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Are you saying that usefulness trumps ethics in medicine but not in warfare? If so, why do you think that?
    - Gracana 10y ago
      Of course it doesn't "trump ethics." In the context of a hand transplant, the likelihood of the procedure resulting in a useful hand is a large part of deciding whether or not it's ethical. The likelihood of improved quality of life is weighed against the likelihood of pain and complications.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  My meaning was that hand transplants would (probably) be unethical if the result provided no function. The technique is good enough that the benefits outweigh the costs. Obviously they must also consider the other aspects of it ethical.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > "the doctors apparently believe them to be useful enough to be ethical" > I don't think ethics works that way. I'm pretty sure that they do. > Just because something is very useful doesn't necessarily mean that it's ethical. OTOH, for lots of things (and surgical operations with inherent risks are pretty solidly on this list) utility is certainly relevant to (and a certain level, a prerequisite for) an action to be ethical, even if it is not sufficient alone to determine that the action is ethical.
jbrambleDC 10y ago
you may find this interesting: https://medium.com/@JBramVB/the-rejection-of-the-human-condition-49fc722f1293#.ktqap976j https://medium.com/@JBramVB/the-rejection-of-the-human-condi... I discuss my thoughts on some of these things. would love to hear any opposing or agreeing views you have.
- cLeEOGPw 10y ago
  I disagree with that article completely. > We need our bodies and our internal organs to live Implies you can live without body? Neither mind, nor consciousness is live, that's why you literally don't live if you don't have body. There's no philosophical dilemma here - life must be able to replicate. Mind can't replicate. It's not alive. > 2. We must eat to survive Literally. A physical body, which is the only way to be alive, needs physical atoms to exist, and acquisition of the building blocks is called eating. > 3. We must die Only point I can semi-agree with. Life span can be reasonably extended. No immortality though. > 4. We must work to live Not even starting.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    What's wrong with #4? Assuming that we continue to require resources, then #4 will continue to be true. Granted: as technology improves, we need to work a lot less to achieve the same quality of life. But there's still a requirement to produce those resources; it is incumbent upon someone to work to produce them, be it a farm labourer or an engineer designing farm robots.
  - klodolph 10y ago
    I think it's not really interesting if you disagree with an article simply by using a different understanding of the same words. 1. "Body" in the paragraph means "the rest of the body, excluding the brain". It is not used to mean, "the entire body, including the brain". 2. This is incorrect. The acquisition of matter is not always called eating. I'm not talking about drinking—we can group that with eating—but there are alternative ways to acquire nutrients and there are also other ways to acquire matter that do not involve nutrients. Having a nutrient IV would not involve eating, and if you got a good source of nutrients this way, it would bypass many of the biological problems involving nutrient absorption through the GI tract. Problems with nutrient absorption in the GI tract account for a worrying number of health problems in older individuals. (You can also attach matter to your body with surgery.)

ergothus 10y ago

The trick is - most biological work we do consists of "fix enough things that the complicated and as-of-yet unreplicable biology takes over and manages the rest". Heck, advances like PCR and CRISPR are just applications of the same thing - We can't economically construct/deconstruct DNA strands, but biology has figured it out, so we piggyback on that. Sometimes we understand but don't have a more economical solution, sometimes we understand but can't replicate at all yet, and yet other times we only vaguely understand what's happening (and can't replicate). Regardless, this seems to be the march of modern medicine: The process of "observe, understand, create" is too slow when people are literally dying and suffering, so we stick in some "make best guess use of observations" in the middle. So yeah, getting a head to talk to the body is really hard and complicated - but doing everything a body does (including feedback too/from the head) is even harder.