h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Ste, thanks for the prompt reply

I must stress that I am not condoning the research, I can't (yet) cos I know v little about it

I'm guessing that you and I have differing definitions for the term 'ethics'...


ethics : what's right or wrong based on reason
morals : what's right or wrong based on social custom

<< a distressing and scientifically questionable study >> seems, to me, to blur the two - and I'm not saying that that is _wrong_, just different

I always see ethics as the application of morality. I think the two words can be used interchangably though.

"<< a distressing and scientifically questionable study >> seems, to me, to blur the two - and I'm not saying that that is _wrong_, just different"

I'll clarify what I meant. To me personally and to the animal in question it was distressing. Also I think the cost:benefit ratio of that animals' suffering compared to the value of the scientific knowledge extracted was heavily weighted towards the cost side. Especially when their are other methods to get at the question.

Ste

I like to draw a distiction between ethics and morals

<>
Ethically, the research is wrong...
if the 'other' methods are cheaper/easier/will more quickly lead to further understanding etc (based on 'reason'/'logic' etc)

<>
Morally, the research is wrong...
for people who care more about the monkey than the possible benefits

I see that the issues in an ethics debate are likely to remain static, regardless of 'culture', 'philosophy' etc

Whereas the issues in any morals debate are almost certain to vary - e.g if/when a possible benefactor (maybe the scientist, maybe a patient) is loved by some and either unknown/despised by others

I've been a-googling

http://216.247.9.207/bthtml/articles1.htm
Longer Life For The Paralyzed?

Who might benefit from a head transplant? The first candidates for the procedure will probably be people who have been paralyzed from the neck down because of an accident. For reasons that are still unclear, such individuals often die prematurely of multiple-organ failure. Although transferring a paralyzed person's head to another body had not--at least at this point in the development of the technology--allow them to move or walk again, it could prolong their life. And many hope that in the 21st century, physicians will find a way to heal severed spinal cords, so those who have their heads transplanted onto a new body might someday receive sensory information from and gain motor control over it.

Where will bodies for head transplantation come from? The recipient body had be someone who has been declared brain dead. Such individuals already serve as multiple-organ donors, so there should be no strikingly new bioethics considerations for head transplantation.

But how well will we as a society accept the concept that human brain transplantation involves transplanting the mind and spirit? Are we willing to acknowledge that the human brain is the physical repository of the soul, something this operation implies? These are the questions facing us as we go in reality where Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley went only in fiction.

another google find

http://yarchive.net/med/head_transplant.html

Eventually, he (or somebody like him) will do it. I see nothing ethically wrong with it, if paid for privately.

As to whether or not government should pick up the tab for such a thing, at taxpayer expense-- well, that's another matter. But that's a hard question in any case. You already (as taxpayer) pay for artificial valves to be put in people who give themselves endocarditis from IV drug abuse.

And new livers for alcoholics. That money could have gone for some other medical care. Pap smears for poor women. Vaccines for kids. Artificial hearts for 20 year olds with viral cardiomyopathy. The list is endless.

Steve Harris, M.D.

and...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1263758.stm
'Scientifically misleading'

The arguments against head and brain transplants were outlined by Dr Stephen Rose, director of brain and behavioural research at the Open University.

He said: "This is medical technology run completely mad and out of all proportion to what's needed.

"It's entirely misleading to suggest that a head transplant or a brain transplant is actually really still connected in anything except in terms of blood stream to the body to which it has been transplanted.

"It's not controlling or relating to that body in any other sort of way."

He added: "It's scientifically misleading, technically irrelevant and scientifically irrelevant, and apart from anything else a grotesque breach of any ethical consideration."

"It's a mystification to call it either a head transplant or a brain transplant.

"All you're doing is keeping a severed head alive in terms of the circulation from another animal. It's not connected in any nervous sense."

The issue of who someone who had received a head transplant would "be" is extremely complicated, said Professor Rose.

"Your person is largely embodied but not entirely in your brain".

He added: "I cannot see any medical grounds for doing this. I cannot see that scientifically you would actually be able to regenerate the nerves which could produce that sort of control.

"And I think that the experiments are the sort that are wholly unethical and inappropriate for any possible reason."

He added that the way to help the quadriplegic community was to work on research to help spinal nerves regenerate.

These days you can have your corpse stored in liquid nitrogen until the technology comes along to bring you back to life OR, and this is the interesting bit, you can simply go for cut-price option and just have your head, including brain, put into storage. I believe it's called cryogenics. When they thaw your brain in a couple of hundred years time (by the way - you have to pay up front) they will then have the technology to do the brain transplant.

I have grave doubts about the viabilty of this because I saw a man at Jodrell Bank put a tennis ball into a flask of liquid nitrogen. When he took the ball out and bounced it broke like a raw egg. Having witnessed that I can't imagine how anyone's frozen brain could be thawed out and got going again. Mind you, with science you can never say never

I agree. If you froze a brain in LN2, and then dropped it on the ground, you probably would shatter it, and it wouldn't be useable.

however, that's not what they do.

The freeze it in LN2 so they can freeze it rapidly, so that they get glassy, rather than crystalline water, which in turns means that the water doesn't expand by as much and burst/destroy the cells.

Presumably they rely on the ability of future people to carefully/properly thaw out the deceased *and* cure whatever killed them in the first place.

Yes, you make sure not to drop any of the frozen heads on the floor.

Ste: What other methods is it you feel would have been better for getting these results?

It depends upon the question. The question here seems to be "can I do a head transplant?", but actually concerned itself with getting the blood vessels supplying the brain hooked up again quickly enough before the brain dies. No nerves were reconnected. The head wasn't physically attached to the body. The monkey didn't go on to lead a life of leisure in a heavily wooded area of Borneo.

- We know we can reattach blood vessels.
- We know oxygen supply is critical from continuing brain function.
- We know this applies to other animals, so there is no need to test this on monkeys.

This experiment was not necessary at all, which makes it worse. However, if you want to practice sewing blood vessels together rapidly then you can do it on fresh dead tissue. If you want to measure oxygen flow into the brain you could use some non-invasive physiology methods. As I said, it's as if they just wanted to see if it was possible, not why they would want to do it.

Ste

Given that a head transplant becomes a possibility at some future time, and that a man's head is attached to a woman's body - or vice versa- what is the likely result?

Will she be able to parallel park, and will he enjoy shopping?

Novo

PS Only joking!

Ste: I'm interested where you found out the information of the aims of this experiment from? Was it from the TV programme, which was where I discovered it? Have you read the write up of the experiment, particularly the 'Background and Aims' section which should indicate why it was carried out, including what was already known at the time. Are you scientifically trained and versed in research in the field to know if there were alternate experimental techniques,

And finally if you believe that this was explioting animals for human pleasure then I take it you are vegatarian? After all no one *has* to eat meat you could live perfectly well of a meat free diet! How is doing causing suffering to animals so you have the pleasure of eating meat different from causing suffering so that we can find the answer to an interesting question?

"I'm interested where you found out the information of the aims of this experiment from? Was it from the TV programme, which was where I discovered it?"

Online. And online journals. PubMed is my friend.

"Have you read the write up of the experiment, particularly the 'Background and Aims' section which should indicate why it was carried out, including what was already known at the time."

White, R. J., Wolin, L. R., Massopust, L., Taslitz, N. and Verdura, J.: 1971, ‘Cephalic Exchange Transplantation in the Monkey’, Surgery 70(1), 135–139. Is not online. And I'll be buggered if I'm going to the library to photocopy the damn thing.

"Are you scientifically trained and versed in research in the field to know if there were alternate experimental techniques"

Yes and no, but yes.

"And finally if you believe that this was explioting animals for human pleasure then I take it you are vegatarian?"

Ste: I'm sorry I assumed that you hadn't!

And apoligies for the well worn vegatarian rant - the problem with being anti meat and pro vivisection is that you do spend most of your time arguing with both camps if you ge tinto it.

Hi Z

No worries. My wife is vegeterian, and I don't cook meat at home that often as a consequence. It's just that I'm well versed with the whole thing and didn't want to go over it again.

The only ethical problems I have with meat are the industrialisation of the whole process. I have no problems eating an animal that has been bred for that purpose. Though sometimes I am troubled by eating mammals. Then again, the sacrifice of rats and mice for science is a valuable one. Basically I can empathise with both sides.

All in all it is a very difficult ethical maze. Though this head transplant seemed a lot more clear cut to me: It was wrong.



Ste

I think I might stick to my music

Instead of becoming a brain surgeon you mean?

Do you listen to relaxing music whilst doing brain surgery?

Well, I imagine some kind of adrenaline pumping heavy metal would not be a good idea.

I don't write heavy metal music so that wouldn't be a problem.
How about 'Fiddler on the Roof'?