5 min reading time

This man wants to receive the first human head transplant.
http://medgroup.biz/new-head

I don’t even know where to begin with this one.

Is this ethical?

And the broader question, how much of you could we replace (prosthetics, major organs) and still consider YOU human?

If, upon your death, we were able to download all your thoughts and memories and upload them into a new organism, would that creature be human?

With all our technological advances, where is the line that defines what a human being is?

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I think the topic is fascinating and I’d like to collect a panel to discuss it at our next 10x Medical Device Conference in May.

I’m taking recommendations for speakers here and at http://medicaldeviceevents.com/speakers/you/ – apply or suggest someone!

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DISCUSSIONS

Aetna leaving 70% of the Obamacare counties it serves

Off-Label Use

Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of medical devices

Independent reps vs. in-house team for a med device start-up?

10x talk: The Theranos 483 Warning Letters

10x talk: The Medical Internet of Things

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Make it a great week.

Joe Hage
Medical Devices Group Leader

P.S. I’m recruiting speakers for our fifth annual 10x Conference. Visit http://medicaldeviceevents.com/speakers/you/ to apply.

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José Mª Alvarez Castro
Gestión de la innovación en Bitron Industrie
Not really “head transplant” but “the-full-body transplant”. Nobody is going to get his head transplanted nowhere. Is the rest of the body what is going to be transplanted.

I can not see any ethical problem with it. Also, this is much better than Futurama’s Heads in Jars…

Mark Proulx
Quality and Remediation Rock Star
Fred Zinos great comment! AHAHAHAHAHA! Didn’t EVEN occur to me that this might be the case!

Elena Lucatelli
MSc in Materials Science and Technology
It’s a very controversial situation. In my opinion, the science mission is to improve the life of someone; many times this happens also when at first glance this is not clear for the majority of people. But I am not expert in neurosurgery so…why trying to transplant the whole head instead of only the brain?
Moreover, I think it could be more useful trying to restore the spinal damage, many studies are focused on this subject!

Allison Williams
Former Surgical Technology Program Director/CST
All I can say is I’d love to scrub in on that Surgery. I agree this man should be applauded, and this will definitely be written in medical journals.

Surender Gupta
Principal Consultant, Technology Innovation Group (Travel, Transportation, Hospitality) at Tata Consultancy Services
I would rather be happier with seemingly simpler issues like helping my poor pancreas to rejuvenate!

Barnaby Westfold
Digital Programs Manager – Endoscopy at Boston Scientific
Incredible progress. I will be following this story for sure..

Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
Anil Bhalani, I don’t understand your perspective. It seems to me that this person would be doing as much to help other sick people as the first heart transplant patient did. If the transplant is successful, then anyone with a healthy brain in a dying body could be “fixed.”

Julie Omohundro
Principal Consultant at Class Three, LLC
Stephen Glassic, it’s an old movlie plot already, e.g:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092208/

Marie Suetsugu
QA/RA
I’m sorry, and I can imagine how he may be feeling/agonising, but I think this way of thinking just comes from human arrogance :'( Science is not telling the truth as such but rather very much influenced by the sociocultural context in which one lives…

Frida Vaserman
Passion for Excellence – Director Quality Assurance at PSM
It reminds me of “Heart of a Dog” by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov ( Andrew Hague even more than actual heart transplant by Dr. Christian Barnard).

Khoi Le
Quality Inspection Associate at Thornhill Medical
He’s volunteering to have a body transplant not forced. We should applaud him for giving his life to research as the likilyhood of success is super low, heh.

Joe Hage
🔥 Find me at MedicalDevicesGroup.net 🔥
Thanks to Beth Loring who pointed me to this thought-provoking piece: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you.html

Phaedra Kazali
Dental laboratory Owner, Smile art Dental Studio
99% succes of living through this complex procedure is pretty high in expectations for the first time? This young man is the very essence of our scientific past/future and not to mention extremely brave. I believe anything is possible these days. Just a matter of time before the fantasy of it comes to life (literally) …I’m hopeful for him and the surgeon, each to their own.

Dr. Gary Sheard
Dermaloch & SEMC Ltd
It’s not a new head – it’s a new body.

Matthew B.
IT Business Relationship Manager at Pacific Life
Ethics aside, this is less about a new head, and more about a new body.

Flavio Calonge
Connecting B2B companies with newest technology solutions to transform their customer’s digital journey experience.
Good conversation! It remind me when the stem cells were a hot topic a few years ago.
Rather to think about possible or not, ethical or not, it amaze me all the possibilities this can create for people with disabilities.
Can’t stop innovation, but reality is another matter…

Anil Bhalani
Consultant – Regulatory Affairs/Quality Assurance
It is unethical. This person would do nothing to help another sick person, which I why it is unethical to use him as a test case. Just because this person is motivated to help health science is not enough. If the intent is to fix a disease or defect, the person being transplanted should have that in the head.

But then outside the USA Physicians do play God and get respected for it when it succeeds and his the media and when it fails, it just is made to disappear.

Martin Berka
IoT systems: putting it all together
Writers have been there. The brain is critical. The head transplant is a person transplant, and the ethical issues are a combination of organ donation and removal from life support. If the donor brain is dead, then the donor is arguably dead regardless of other functions. The organ donation is the more complicated issue to me:
1. Donor consent, presumably granted in advance.
2. An entire body worth of organs is being given to a single recipient, and one should probably consider whether the resulting quality-years would not be better distributing parts among many, taking into account the greater rejection risk for many transplants versus one. We lack prior data, so I think it is worth a try.
3. Future economics – a number of para- and quadriplegics could seek bodies. If people are willing to die for money and give organs for money, would someone be willing to donate their body for money? Murder, but it would come up unless measures were taken to meet demand with legitimate supply.

Andrew Hague
President at CellSonic Limited
Many years I had a customer who had trained under Dr Christian Barnard in South Africa so one night at dinner I asked him about the heart transplants. Apparently Barnard was not an easy man to work for and the heart transplants were not as formidable as the media made out; he said it was the body transplant that was amazing. A rich man had his head put on a baboon and lived longer. The person was still the man he had always been but the body was different. I forget how long he survived, maybe it was a year.
What was interesting was the explanation of how little body is needed to survive. The brain requires blood containing oxygen and some nutrients. Thus limbs were not essential in that experiment. I forget the details. Not many such operations were performed because very few people could afford it. Obviously Barnard had enough stature to work independently.

Francis R. Palmer III MD
Founder, CMO & CEO at The Palmer Code Institute of Beverly Hills
I agree with Yves. If we define human as the “soul” or ability to have emotions and a sense of ones self then taking the essence of that and placing it into any vessel could be considered human. I know that’s quite a stretch but take a moment and look at the logical progression of human evolution and development. As computers become more sophisticated and we develop neurobiological interfaces to replace worn out joints, limbs and even internal organs what now seems like fantasy, in say 100 years, might very well be commonplace. Who’s to say that in that time, some may choose to possess great increases in longevity by becoming more biomechanical. Taken to the extreme, this would be a neural download of all the memories, feelings and experiences of that individual into a mechanical body. The ethics are complicated. What then defines humanity? What would such a combination be called? Most importantly, once we go down that pathway…where does it end and effect evolution?