Head transplant

A head transplant, is a surgical operationinvolving the replacement of an organism's head with a replacement head. No such transplants have yet been performed on humans, but there have been many successful head transplants performed on monkeys by Dr. Robert Whiteof Case Western Reserve University, who in 1984announced that he felt his techniques were suitably developed to work on humans.

Since the technology required to reattach a severed spinal cordhas not yet been developed, the subject of a head transplant would be a quadriplegic. This technique has been proposed as possibly useful for people who are already quadriplegics, and who are suffering from widespread organ failures which would otherwise require many different and difficult transplant surgeries. As of this time, there is no uniform consensus on the ethics of such a procedure.

See also

• organ transplant
• whole-body transplant

External links

• "The Frankenstein Factor" - an article on White's work from clevescene.com, first published December 9, 1999
• "Frankenstein fears after head transplant" - a BBC News article dated Friday, April 6, 2001
• "US patent 4,666,425" - "Device for perfusing an animal head", issued to Chet Fleming
• "IHTT - Institute for Head Transplant Technology" - "Information about head transplant technology"

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head+transplant Wikipedia article Head transplant.