It's For Science, I Swear..
I once asked a doctor, "hey, would a human head survive being detached from the body as long as you could provide it with what it needs?" suffice to say, it took them back a bit - "it's not what you think doc" - I wanted to add.. 😅
I remember reading about experiments that were related to this curiosity of mine.
There was the two-headed dog experiments by Vladimir Demikhov in the 1950s and the Nazi twins experiments during World War II by Josef Mengele - both horrific and devastating to the people and animals they experimented on and even though they wouldn't say it out loud, modern medicine ended up taking on and advancing their research(in somewhat more ethical ways) some of which is in use today in areas such as organ transplantation.
Then around 2015 there was Sergio Canavero, who already had a willing volunteer to undergo a head transplant, keep in mind you'd need another donor for the recipient body - all manner of ethical, political and legal chaos erupted around the procedure and in the end it never happened but I did learn about polyethylene glycol in nerve repair - really cool stuff! 🙂
Also as a fun callback, there were those heads-in-a-jar from Futurama. 🤣
So all this brought about my curiosity - would it be possible? 🤔
I know there's a lot that I have absolutely no clue about with regards to medicine and how the body works to even begin breaking down such a complex question.
In fact one of the concerns the doctor brought up was about hormones and how the head would get them - and all I was thinking about was blood and oxygen. 😅
It was one of those moments that made me realise just how vast and different the systems of the body are and that it probably needs it all to do what it does, and that it will likely be a while before the first head transplant is performed.
That being said, them Futurama heads-in-a-jar are cool AF! 😄
~ 🐨
come along with me and the butterflies and bees - Ashley Eriksson