Submitted 12 hours ago by Perspectivist@feddit.uk to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Thought on this before. I don’t think any of us could take the change without going insane and likely catatonic.
It’s not just about learning coordination all over again, getting used to new physical quirks. Different hormones, reflexes, nerve wiring, gut bacteria, senses, just too much to handle. Hell, I’d go into shock if your dropped me in my own body from 20-years back.
I was always really bothered when people are talking about that “head transplant”. Is that not more of a “full body transplant”?
The origin and story of Dogman is certainly dark.
Brain transplants are purely science fiction for now, but while it might be called a brain transplant, it’s more of a body transplant. Assuming you’re taking a useless body with a useful brain and a useful body with a useless brain, and swapping, the person, being in the brain, is getting a new body. The owner of the brain-dead body wouldn’t get a new brain. Their family would get the useless brain and useless body to bury.
If that sounds grim, it’s because it is, and the potential for abuse would be so great. Imagine a random wealthy, 79-year-old pederast dictator who would demand that some family give up their ten-year-old child to receive his brain. Maybe they get compensated for their child, maybe they just get to keep living. Is that something medical science should allow? Would there be any condition in which it’s ethically or morally okay? And what if, with healthy body replacements, a brain can only live 150 years? After the second or third transplant, what would be the ethics or morality of taking a good mind (say, one that might cure cancer) and giving that brain 10 more years of life, versus giving a 10-year-old only 10 more years before that body just drops dead at 20 (maybe to be a recipient of another brain with a dying body, but to make things fun, let’s say a body can only get a new brain once: remove the second brain, and a third one cannot be successfully transplanted in)?
[waves hand] It’s fine. Just have to 3D print the new body and a regulation that requires everyone take a body of the opposite sex. That way trans people can get the right body and the rich can gain some empathy for trans people real fast.
Kidney might be similar. Both people are likely to be left with one functioning kidney, but one has to take anti-rejection drugs.
A partial liver transplant and a bone marrow transplant is even more along the lines of better to be the donor.
And fecal transplants are pretty easy on both parties, but moreso the donor.
Unless you’re one of the lucky few whose body simply accepts the transplanted organ as its own.
fecal transplants
wait
does this mean “eat shit” counts as unsolicited medical advice
My friend had a kidney transplant but they moved her own kidney to the front. I forgot what that workes on but even she said it was odd.
Tumor transplant.
Depends on how healthy your body is. My hyper intelligent brain would be ill placed in the body of an obese alcoholic with a clubfoot, tooth rot and rectal itch.
You say that, but if the alternative is a completely paralyzed body stuck in a bed 24/7, with sores on your back, ass, and thighs, and no recourse? I’d take rectal itch and tooth rot. If I can afford a brain transplant in the US healthcare system, I can afford dentures and a calamine enema
In this case, does the body belong to the donor? Is the donor still alive? These questions have been stuck in my brain for a long time and I don’t know where to start my research.
0ops@piefed.zip 2 hours ago
You know what? Hook me up with a new brain. This one’s becoming a money pit