0:01

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from

0:03

how Stuff Works dot com.

0:11

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:13

Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

0:15

There's Jerry. There's stuff

0:17

you should know, and it's

0:20

stuff you should know about something that

0:22

has nothing to do with the sun. Are

0:25

you relieved? Yes? Are

0:28

you uh suffering post

0:31

traumatic podcast disorder a little

0:33

bit? Yeah? But but overall

0:36

I'm feeling good about this. Okay, about

0:38

this one coming up? Yeah, fin as strong?

0:41

Yeah? What did Jerry say, always do the suck

0:43

on in first? Yeah? Well,

0:46

so far, so good. Yep.

0:49

It just remains to be seen whether this one's great.

0:51

But I don't see how it could be worse than the Aurora

0:53

one. Well, this one about

0:56

human head transplants. UM.

0:59

After I picked it, I thought, gee,

1:01

should we even be covering this, because

1:04

well, if you read opinion

1:06

pieces about this potential head

1:09

transplant surgery,

1:11

which we'll get to, a

1:13

lot of people are saying like, this

1:16

is this is bad, this is junk

1:18

science, this is dangerous medicine,

1:21

and you shouldn't even be talking about this stuff, right.

1:24

But then I read an article in The Atlantic,

1:27

um, and it's The Atlantic, and

1:30

I was like, you know what, if they're covering this, uh,

1:32

then we should cover it too. And people

1:35

probably said the same thing about kidney

1:37

transplants and heart transplants and skin

1:39

graphs. You know, oh yeah, for sure.

1:41

But I think the big difference with this

1:43

is and I think this is what the medical and

1:46

bioethical community has a problem

1:48

with. There's this one

1:50

maverick possibly lunatic

1:53

scientist surgeon who

1:55

was plowing ahead with

1:58

this, Sir dree with

2:02

the rest of the medical field

2:04

worldwide basically saying stop,

2:07

stop, like you can't do this. This is We're

2:09

not there yet, and he's

2:11

saying, nope, we're there. I've

2:13

even got somebody who's willing to do

2:15

this. We're gonna give it a shot. Well,

2:19

yes, yes, and no. He's a

2:22

lot of that is in this Atlantic

2:24

article really kind of spells everything out. A

2:27

lot of that is, um

2:29

bravado out of this dude.

2:32

And there is probably

2:34

no way that he's going to do this in December of this

2:36

year, like he said he is. Yeah,

2:39

he's said that he is going

2:41

to go ahead with the surgery, at least officially,

2:43

is what he's saying. In December of two thousand

2:45

and seventeen. That's not gonna happen. Specifically,

2:48

he's going to do it with a

2:50

Russian computer engineer

2:53

named Valerie Spirit and off,

2:56

and um, that may not happen with him.

2:58

He see he has

3:00

a spirit enough, has something called word nig

3:02

Hoffman disease, which is a spinal spinal

3:05

muscular dystrophy. And

3:08

um, has he backed out

3:11

now because he seemed pretty gung ho

3:13

and everything I saw. No, he's gung ho, but

3:15

he is on record of saying like, I

3:18

don't want to be a part of an expensive

3:22

euthanasia uh

3:26

whatever procedure. Yeah, well that makes

3:28

sense. I mean, the whole reason he wants to do this is

3:30

to to get better, to improve

3:32

his lot. He's wheelchair bound and his his muscles

3:35

are withering away. Uh, and he's

3:37

thirty and he he wants to be mobile

3:39

again. But yeah, I

3:41

would imagine, Yeah, he doesn't

3:44

want to do

3:46

this just to die, right,

3:48

So he's kind of um and

3:50

what we're talking about, I guess we should just go ahead. And if

3:52

people are severely confused, it's

3:55

called the human head transplant, but

3:57

what it really is is a human body

3:59

trans plant. Because what you're

4:01

doing is is you're taking a person in

4:05

this case, this Russian gentleman who

4:08

has a fully functioning brain

4:11

and from the neck up is fine, but

4:14

his body is wasting away. And one

4:17

they get to the point where they can do the surgery,

4:19

they're going to get a body from

4:21

a recently very recently deceased

4:23

person or or soon to be

4:26

deceased person. Yeah. They would just need to be

4:28

brain dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,

4:31

Um and move

4:33

the heads, which would in turn

4:35

give what's

4:37

his name Valerie a new body.

4:40

Yes, which is

4:42

is radical of a thing as you could ever imagine.

4:45

There is no more radical medical

4:47

procedure as

4:49

we currently stand right

4:51

now, No, no chance, not even

4:53

close. And it's not like they're even swapping

4:55

the heads. The donor's head just gets thrown

4:58

away well in

5:00

a bucket, Yeah,

5:02

I guess for for a little chuck

5:04

to find. Yeah, I didn't

5:06

think about that, but um they're yeah,

5:08

you don't put it back on. No,

5:11

there's no point in it. So this

5:14

this head transplant, our body transplant,

5:16

depending on your perspective the

5:18

whole idea. Obviously, it's kind of an

5:20

old idea, like it goes back to Frankenstein,

5:23

and you can make a case that

5:26

Frankenstein is based on even earlier stuff

5:28

like creating a gollum from clay,

5:30

that kind of stuff. Um,

5:33

But the idea is not new,

5:37

but the idea that it could

5:39

actually be done is

5:41

fairly new. Um. The this

5:44

surgeon who's planning on carrying it out,

5:46

Dr Sergio uh kind

5:48

of arrow. He published

5:50

an article in two thousand thirteen

5:53

and said here's how I plan

5:56

to do this, and we'll get to that in a minute. But

5:59

in the article that he wrote, the journal

6:01

article he wrote laying out how the surgery

6:03

could be done. One of the first things he does

6:05

a site um similar

6:07

surgeries that were carried out on

6:10

animals. Yeah, which we've

6:12

covered these before and um,

6:15

past episodes I think on like

6:18

I think one of them was a top ten list like

6:21

awful medical procedures or something

6:24

I can't remember. But this one one

6:26

case specifically that stands out.

6:29

There was a Russian doctor name of Vladimir

6:33

Demikoff, and he

6:36

very famously grafted

6:39

the head and four legs of one

6:41

dog onto another dog. Um,

6:43

And apparently the both

6:46

of the heads could smell and

6:48

hear and see and swallow and

6:51

scream and lived. Um.

6:55

I think he did this a few times,

6:57

and the biggest success was one of these

6:59

dogs live for twenty nine days, right,

7:02

which is actually, from what I'm seeing,

7:05

that's a very very long time. Um.

7:08

And this is at a time in the what

7:10

you say,

7:13

Um, this is a time when the only

7:15

successful transplants that had been carried out

7:18

in humans were bone blood vessels and corneas.

7:20

They've never done a major organ

7:23

transplantet And this guy's getting dogs

7:25

with grafted heads, two heads to live

7:27

for twenty nine days. So it was a big deal. But

7:30

even still, and I'm sure at the time people

7:32

were like, that's pretty tasteless, um

7:35

when looking back historically,

7:38

like why it don't do that? Stop?

7:40

I wish that had never happened. What were

7:42

you doing? And apparently Demikov's

7:45

ultimate goal was to just

7:47

basically get transplants down and

7:50

create a bank of organs, an

7:52

oregan bank, to where if you need a transplant,

7:55

you could get any transplant you needed any

7:57

time. Um, transplants would just

7:59

be so teen And he saw this as

8:01

a means to to an

8:04

end learning techniques, because

8:06

apparently grafting dogs

8:08

together would help you with that, right,

8:11

which I mean, it makes makes a case. Yeah,

8:14

he wasn't a mad scientist. He was trying to advance

8:16

medicine. Uh So in

8:18

nineteen seventy that was there

8:20

a notice. There's just been really big gaps

8:22

and a lot of this stuff for good reason, I guess.

8:25

Um. But in nineteen seventy and right here in the United

8:27

States, uh, there was a

8:30

recus monkey in Cleveland

8:32

and one Dr Robert White performed

8:34

ahead transplant and the

8:37

monkey survived neurologically for thirty

8:39

six hours. But I

8:42

believe he never actually

8:45

connected the spinal cord. No, no,

8:48

And that's the big the biggest

8:50

hurdle right now. Yeah, it was and

8:53

still is so so Dr

8:55

White, I mean, still, this is pretty significant.

8:58

He transplanted ahead and from

9:00

one monkey to another and

9:02

managed to um connect the

9:05

the major veins and arteries

9:08

um and resuscitated,

9:10

managed to resuscitate the monkey

9:13

um and it lived for a few days. But

9:16

um, apparently it was just

9:19

an awful thing, even even at the

9:21

time. One of the scientists that was there who's

9:23

actually become um Dr

9:25

Cannavero, the surgeon who wants to do the human

9:28

head transplant. This this other guy has

9:30

become one of his greatest and most outspoken

9:32

public critics. Um,

9:34

he was there at the time when this this um

9:37

experiment in nineteen seventy was carried out,

9:39

and he said, this is this is a terrible

9:41

thing to do, even to a

9:43

monkey. Said, we tried to feed it. The

9:45

first time we fed it, the food spilled

9:47

out of its tricky onto the floor.

9:50

Um, it was just an awful thing. And

9:53

this guy is really beating the drum to like stop

9:55

Dr Cannavero from from

9:57

carrying this out because he was there saying where

10:00

he saw that, he saw the monkey experiments.

10:02

But Canavero is saying,

10:05

you can say that all you want, all the food

10:07

could have spilled that on the floor, doesn't matter

10:10

because it was successful. The

10:13

monkey was revived for three days. But

10:15

everybody agrees there was

10:17

there. They didn't connect

10:20

the spinal column, and that's the big hurdle. That's

10:22

one of the biggest unknowns with the actual

10:24

head transplant. Yeah, and more

10:27

recently in the past couple of years,

10:30

in fact, I think just last year, there's a

10:33

surgeon who's actually partnered up with

10:35

the Italian doctor named

10:37

um Gialping

10:40

wren Uh and he's a surgeon

10:42

in Harbin, China who has successfully

10:44

done this on mice. Yeah,

10:47

he's also partnered with another UM

10:49

researcher at khon Kook

10:51

University in Soul, Korea, Korea,

10:54

who's also carrying these these some stuff

10:56

out on mice. And Canavero's

10:59

based clee using these studies

11:02

to say, hey, this is possible,

11:05

but apparently the scientific community is

11:07

saying this is these are not

11:09

necessarily good studies. Well

11:11

and Wren Dr Wren in China, like

11:14

before not gather, he is UM.

11:17

He's the one that's saying like, let's just slow our

11:19

role here, UM and

11:21

do this if we ever try to

11:23

do it, do it when we really think we can. Like

11:26

I've done a monkey, I've done some mice.

11:29

Um, we're not

11:31

ready to do it human yet. So let's just not talk

11:33

about um. Valerie in

11:35

December of and

11:38

please stop doing TED

11:40

talks and going on news programs

11:43

and just shut up for a little while. But

11:46

it doesn't sound like that since Sergio Cannaverro's

11:49

d n A. No, he is very

11:51

brash sort of he's

11:55

he they said in this article. He uses he says

11:57

bread instead of money, like hey,

12:00

if I can't raise the money, I'll go to uh,

12:02

someone like Zuckerberg and get

12:04

the bread to do this. It

12:07

says here in the Atlantic article. He says Cannabaro

12:09

tends to make blowhard statements that

12:12

denigrate his critics, like this, I'm

12:14

into jiu jitsu. Jiu jitsu.

12:16

He told me so, I have the martial arts

12:18

mind that you need to tackle all the morons that come

12:21

with idiotic questions. He's

12:23

not doing himself any favors. Yeah, I don't

12:25

think he sees it like that from what I'm seeing, Like

12:27

there's this I saw um where

12:29

I get all my news, the Daily Mail. I

12:31

saw a Daily Mail article on

12:34

him and his procedure, and it

12:36

has a photo shoot of him

12:39

wearing scrubs with a man's

12:41

head on a platter. Like

12:44

doctors don't do that. They don't

12:46

do photo shoots like that. They are

12:48

not trying to court controversy. Like,

12:50

yes, if you're a surgeon like you,

12:53

you have some part of your fiber is pretty

12:55

cocky and arrogant, maybe even have

12:57

a God complex. I think it's kind

12:59

of required typically

13:02

with um, with that field

13:04

that profession. Right, this guy is exponentially

13:07

beyond anything that's even

13:10

high end for a normal surgeon as

13:12

far as egotism and um

13:15

and blow hardness goes. Most

13:17

of them don't don't boast about jiu jitsu

13:20

publicly. No. Uh. In fact,

13:22

the most scientists and doctors, um,

13:25

most don't like him at all. They said, this is

13:27

one quote. Uh. He glibly glides

13:30

past major problems with his human

13:32

centipede level medical horror show.

13:35

His plan is insane, like James

13:37

Bond villain, insane and

13:39

will amount to an elaborate act of slow

13:42

torture and murder. So

13:45

I think he's partially obviously

13:47

really like that as a dude. But they

13:49

don't have the money it takes. They don't have the bread,

13:53

like a hundred million dollars to do this, And I think

13:55

he thinks all this media

13:57

attention is what is going to get him

13:59

the bread to carry out this operation. You're

14:02

gonna call it bread from now on. Just

14:04

through this show, did you see a hundred million

14:06

dollars? And most I saw his thirteen million. Oh,

14:09

I mean, I've seen it all over the place, that's the thing I've

14:12

seen. It takes anywhere from thirty

14:14

doctors to a hundred doctors

14:16

to assist in this, which is one of the other big

14:18

problems is getting up

14:20

to a hundred legit doctors that will

14:23

do this, right, you know,

14:26

this guy's like walking clickbait. So

14:30

let's take a break, man, and then we'll come back and we'll

14:32

we'll we'll tell all

14:34

the grizzly details of his plan. M

14:49

hm alright,

14:58

Chuck. So back in two thousand

15:00

thirteen, the Sergio Canavera

15:03

hit the scene in a journal.

15:06

Um, oh, what's

15:08

the journal called Surgical Neurology International.

15:11

It's an open source journal. Yeah, he's no quack.

15:13

We should point out he's been published a lot, and

15:15

he's a legit surgeon, right, Like, he obviously

15:18

knows what he's talking about. It's just the gamble

15:20

that he's taking is so

15:23

so obviously stacked against

15:26

him that you that I think most people

15:28

would say you would have to be insane

15:30

to actually do it, or so reckless

15:33

and indifferent to the fate of your

15:36

patient that you shouldn't be practicing medicine

15:38

in the first place. Yeah, because almost

15:41

the doctors that they've talked to said this

15:43

will end in this man's death. Yeah,

15:46

like, like think about this. They're working on rats.

15:48

Rats have the best outcome of

15:51

any animal so far, and

15:54

there they have like thirty to

15:56

fifty survival rate among rats.

15:59

But even that just means that survived

16:02

no more than one day after having

16:05

their head transplanted. They died

16:07

from the surgery one way or another. It's

16:09

just that survival rate means that they were managed

16:11

to be revived after the surgery.

16:14

It doesn't mean that they went on to live a healthy

16:17

life and bounce their grandchildren on their knee.

16:19

They died within a day.

16:21

Yeah, there's no way that it wouldn't kill

16:23

a human being. Yeah, I mean, even if the

16:25

guy survived, the likelihood of him

16:28

being like, well I got my new body now

16:30

is is like zero. Watch

16:33

me bench this. Although he's uh,

16:36

Cannavero said he has a nine chance

16:38

of living a regular life, and Dr

16:41

Wrenn in China saying no, he doesn't

16:43

quit saying that. You know, yeah,

16:46

this guy is he's exactly

16:48

the kind of surgeon for this age, isn't he

16:51

He really is actually us nineties chance

16:54

to have a normal life. Where'd you get that? Well, it

16:56

just sounds good that,

16:59

yeah, he fits with

17:01

the times. So back in two thirteen,

17:03

in that journal Surgical Neurology

17:05

International, UM, Canavero

17:08

published basically a step by step outline

17:11

of how this um, this

17:13

surgery would go down, and it's it's

17:15

not super in depth, it's

17:18

just it's basically an overview, but

17:20

it hits, you know, most of the salient

17:23

points. And he's basically gone

17:25

and taking different

17:28

surgeries and assemble them

17:30

into this one massive surgery

17:33

that would be a head transplant

17:36

from one donor to the next, or one

17:38

donor to the recipient. Yeah, and I think

17:40

even doctors say, this isn't like, you

17:43

know, he's not crazy, Like

17:46

when you look at it, it's it

17:48

all kind of makes sense. They're just saying

17:50

like it's it's not gonna work, and

17:53

it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the big

17:55

stumbling block is going to be the spinal cord because

17:57

basically everything else he's he's all these

17:59

other urgeri that is cobbling together

18:02

are proven surgeries, like they

18:04

can be done. It's that's

18:06

that connecting the spinal cord

18:08

um. That's

18:10

that's the biggest obstacle during

18:13

the surgery. All right, should we go through this thing?

18:15

But so the first thing you

18:17

do is you need two teams,

18:20

uh, two surgery teams obviously,

18:22

because you have two bodies in there in

18:24

the same operating theater. Yeah, you

18:27

there's got to be a very quick I think they said the

18:29

heads have to be or the head has

18:31

to be reattached in like under an hour to

18:33

have any chance, right, but

18:36

the spinal columns have to be reattached

18:38

within less than two minutes. But

18:41

you have an hour for the whole procedure

18:43

from from the moment the heads are cut off. So

18:46

the first step, Chuck, is remember how we had

18:49

UM. We did an episode

18:51

on therapeutic hypothermia.

18:55

So they're they plan to use therapeutic

18:57

hypothermia where they cool

19:00

the head of the recipient down

19:02

to like fifty degrees, which

19:05

you know normally it's point six

19:07

degrees and at that temperature

19:09

um metabolism slows tremendously.

19:13

So since you have fewer

19:15

processes going on into the cells, you

19:17

have less of a need for oxygen,

19:20

which is good because you're cutting the head off

19:22

of the body and oxygen can be hard

19:24

to come by. So by um

19:26

cooling the head down to fifty

19:29

I think fifty four degrees ferret height, which

19:31

is I believed ten degrees celsius um,

19:34

the metabolism slows

19:36

down enough that you're buying yourself that hour.

19:39

Remember there's that our time limit. That's

19:41

because you've cooled down the head, slowing

19:44

the metabolism, and um,

19:46

that gives you that hour to carry out the

19:48

surgery. So you're cooling the head on

19:51

the recipient, and then you're

19:53

cooling the spinal column to the same

19:55

temperature on the donor, right,

19:58

So uh, everyone's gotten cooled

20:00

down to that point. The recipient

20:02

is gonna be lying down at first, and then later

20:05

like during the surgery and then during recovery

20:07

and everything. Um, he's going to be in a seated position.

20:11

Um, because I guess,

20:14

I guess that just makes sense. With gravity, you'd

20:16

want to be seated, doesn't that make

20:19

sense? I think it makes the surgery easier

20:21

for the surgeons too well, but during

20:23

recovery too, Like they're not gonna lay him back down.

20:26

I don't think I'll ever be allowed to lay down again.

20:28

Maybe not so. Uh. They

20:31

make the incisions at each neck,

20:33

they expose arteries, the

20:35

spine, the jugular veins. UM.

20:38

Obviously they're gonna clamp everything off. Um.

20:41

They color code all

20:43

the muscles um, which sounds

20:45

funny, but it's actually pretty smart.

20:48

I guess. Um, just like

20:50

wires in a in a circuit would be color

20:52

coded. Uh, they want everything hooked

20:54

back up to the right thing, so there color

20:56

coding muscles and they

20:58

leave the spinal cord for the last thing. Yeah,

21:02

this is the this this is the

21:04

very very tricky part here. This is where everybody's

21:06

like, Okay, you're crazy if you try this. But

21:09

Dr Cannavero says, if

21:12

you cut the spines

21:15

the spinal columns of each

21:17

of the um the donor and the recipient

21:20

with a sharp enough blade,

21:22

and you make a surgical cut, you

21:25

should be able to promote regeneration

21:29

of those nerves that you're cutting, UM

21:31

when you reattach them that if

21:34

if the cut is precise enough, the

21:36

damage that's normally associated

21:39

with a surgical sever

21:41

or not a surgical sever, spinal sever

21:44

from like some sort of trauma injury,

21:47

UM, you won't have all the attendant like

21:49

scarification and inflammation that

21:51

you would from that if

21:53

you're doing it surgically with surgical

21:56

precision. That's a big

21:58

that's a big thing that he's saying. Yeah,

22:00

that's one of the biggest um stumbling

22:02

blocks to getting these nerves to reconnect

22:05

is the second they're cut, they're gonna

22:07

start to form scar tissue. Which

22:09

makes it much harder to reattach.

22:11

So in the case of these mice and

22:14

China, they use a one

22:16

thousand dollar scalpel with a diamond blade

22:18

so thin that it's transparent and

22:21

so, Um, this is too small obviously

22:24

for this procedure, but they're gonna

22:26

get a scalpel like that big

22:28

enough to you know, to

22:30

work on a human. Right. So

22:33

here's actually will just say

22:35

a lot of the things that are that people

22:37

object to with this. But but what

22:39

what kind of arrows saying? Um,

22:42

is that with this cut when

22:46

you when you take the spines, are

22:49

we at the head yet? Have we moved the head? Um?

22:53

Well, yeah, we've We've cut the head and there

22:55

people should rest easy knowing they're not just picking

22:57

the head up. Apparently, it's gonna be transferred on

23:00

a on a specially built crane with

23:02

vel grow straps. And

23:04

the crane is actually kind of clever

23:07

too because it can just hold

23:09

it aloft above the

23:11

donor body, right, So

23:14

that allows for the surgeons to connect

23:16

everything again in comfort without

23:18

having to get into any weird positions or whatever.

23:21

Um, with the floating head staring at

23:23

them. Yeah, the floating head hanging over

23:25

the seated, headless body.

23:27

Man, this is the point that we're right now.

23:29

So one of the first things they'll do, um,

23:32

well, the first thing that they're doing, because remember

23:35

you have less than two minutes between when

23:37

you cut the spinal column and when you reattach

23:39

it um.

23:41

So the first thing they're gonna do is attach

23:44

the spinal column in the recipient's

23:47

head and the spinal column

23:49

in the donor's body. And they're gonna

23:51

put this stuff in that apparently

23:54

is made of magic, and it's called PEG

23:57

polyethylene glycol glue,

24:00

a medical surgical glue that

24:03

supposedly work some some wonders

24:05

on the body.

24:07

Yeah, it is like magic, and I don't understand

24:10

how it works. I'm not going to pretend on

24:12

this show. But um in

24:14

China with these mice, uh,

24:17

before they did the transplant, they would literally

24:19

just take this blade. They

24:21

would sever the spinal cord of this poor little mouse

24:24

and then they would take it. That's apparently

24:26

it looks like watered down scotch and

24:29

they would, uh, it's like an amber fluid,

24:31

and they would take a drop of it, drop it on

24:34

that little spinal column, stitch

24:36

the mouse up, and then the

24:38

mouse would walk again. Yeah,

24:40

that's that's something that they were reporting from

24:43

those that these mice had their spinal columns

24:46

totally severed and then reattached

24:48

glued together with pilot polyethylene

24:51

glycol. And yeah, within what like

24:53

three weeks I think, or a couple of weeks, the

24:55

mice were walking again. This one

24:57

was two days. It was

24:59

the do that took three weeks. Yeah, and it said

25:01

the mouse did not walk perfectly. Its

25:04

back legs lurched at times. But

25:06

what compared to a control mouse. Uh,

25:10

yeah, the control mouse could couldn't walk.

25:12

It would just pull the back legs behind

25:14

itself. So, um, this

25:17

this polyethylene glycol, right, Apparently

25:19

what it does is it

25:21

it's hydrophilic and it attracts

25:23

fats to it, so

25:26

it'll go in you you squirt some into

25:28

like the the

25:31

incision or the gap between the two

25:33

spinal columns, and allegedly

25:36

what it will do is attract these

25:38

damaged cells and basically

25:40

fuse them together. They fused together

25:42

and regenerate basically

25:45

into cells. That's one thing it does.

25:48

And then there's this this pig

25:51

that's um kind

25:53

of enhanced. I guess that these researchers

25:55

at RICE University are coming up what they call

25:58

it Texas peg um

26:00

that has graphene nano

26:03

spirals in it, and those serve

26:05

as basically a structure for the cells

26:08

to grow along. And the whole

26:10

point of using PEG here, aside from the fact

26:12

that it can help cells repair

26:15

and regenerate, is that when

26:18

Cannavaro cuts the spinal column,

26:20

he will have severed these nerves

26:23

and axons, the white

26:25

matter that that transmit electricity

26:27

through the body from the brain and vice versa

26:30

UM and they need to reattach and

26:33

if they don't touch one another,

26:35

UM, they're gonna grow past one another

26:38

and the the electrical transmission

26:40

will never be able to take place. He's saying

26:42

if you use PEG, And then these Texas researchers

26:45

are saying, if you use Texas peg, these

26:47

nano structures will provide

26:49

a structure for the um

26:52

neurons that or the axons to grow

26:54

along, and they will reconnect and regrow

26:57

and the person should be able to

26:59

have electrical hasmission through their nerves again

27:01

on the spinal column. This is

27:03

the most controversial point so far.

27:06

Yeah, and they're also gonna have um electrical

27:08

paddles on hand,

27:11

because apparently burst of electricity

27:13

can help re establish that communication when

27:15

you've severed the spinal cord. So do

27:18

you want to take a break right now and

27:21

uh come back and finish up with this gruesome

27:24

operation right after this? M

27:47

alright, So we have now

27:49

put the crazy glue Texas

27:53

style in place.

27:56

Everything's reattached, all the color coded

27:59

UM muscles and nerves

28:02

and arteries and veins like they've taken

28:04

great care. They finally sewed the head on, and

28:06

then they're going to Um. They're

28:09

not just gonna say good luck with recovery.

28:11

They're actually gonna induce

28:13

a medical coma with this gentleman,

28:16

whether it ends up being Um

28:18

the Russian or somebody else.

28:21

Um, because he's got a fatal disease.

28:24

He may not make it if this keeps getting

28:26

delayed. I don't think we mentioned that he's not just

28:28

like, I don't want to live my life like this,

28:30

Like he shouldn't have lived this long. I

28:32

didn't realize he was that. Yeah.

28:35

I think only ten percent of people with his

28:37

condition make it into adulthood. And

28:40

doctors are all like, you should have you

28:42

know, you're on barrow time as it is. You should have gotten

28:44

ahead transparent years ago exactly.

28:47

So they're actually gonna induce a medical

28:49

coma. Um,

28:52

I don't know for how long did it? Say? Like

28:54

three three weeks is what he was

28:56

roughly estimating, just to keep everything,

28:58

just to get everything growing together as calm

29:01

as that with, while preventing

29:03

movement too. Yeah, like

29:06

the possibility of movement. He's just not

29:09

moving for three weeks, which

29:12

I mean, hello bedswords, Am I right? Although

29:15

I guess that's probably the least of your warriors when you've

29:17

just gotten a head transplant. Yeah,

29:20

I think so. But that's that they

29:22

I believe that's it. So they're they're going to be inducing

29:25

a medical coma, and then they'll be passing

29:28

electrical charges through the spinal

29:30

column to try to induce um

29:33

axon regrowth and repair this

29:37

this whole time. And then after three

29:39

weeks he'll get up, do a cart wheel

29:41

and run right out of the hospital. No,

29:44

after three weeks, Uh, maybe

29:46

he'll open his eyes and move his mouth. Um,

29:49

that would be a success to a certain degree.

29:52

What they're really gonna be looking for is anything

29:55

below the neck moving. Um,

29:57

if he wiggles his fingers or his toes, that

30:00

to breakthrough, like we've never

30:02

had in medicine before. UM.

30:05

But even if that happens, that

30:07

would be just the beginning of a very

30:09

very long road of uh,

30:12

not only physiological rehab,

30:15

but psychological rehab. Yeah,

30:18

apparently the psychological impact a lot

30:20

of people are worried about. When um Canavera

30:23

wrote UH the the initial

30:26

article in two thousand thirteen in

30:28

that same journal, a couple of other Italian

30:31

surgeons rode into the editors and said,

30:34

there are a lot of things wrong

30:36

with this ethically, even

30:38

even just put aside all of the questions surgically

30:41

ethically, you know, this

30:44

guy is not taking these things into account. One

30:46

of the things they pointed out was that insanity

30:48

would be a likely outcome from

30:52

head or body transplant, because

30:55

we form our our sense of ourselves

30:58

cognitively in large part through our

31:00

body. So if you suddenly have a different

31:02

body your you would and

31:05

you basically wake up to

31:07

you overnight with with

31:09

two a big fat body identity

31:12

crisis or identity crisis in general.

31:14

Yeah, I mean they've had uh, they've

31:17

seen this act out in like hand

31:19

transplants, and that's really

31:22

you know, you can't see your liver or kidney or your

31:24

heart uh

31:26

or cornea like stuff like that. But um,

31:29

but I'm sure it's still you still think about

31:32

the fact that your your kidney is

31:34

from somewhere else, but you don't have to see it

31:36

all the time. Yeah, exactly. So

31:39

just that reminder of a hand, much

31:41

less an entire body. Uh, it's

31:43

going to be emotionally in psychologically

31:46

challenging to say the least. Um.

31:48

There's some other questions that this definitely

31:51

raises as well. Um.

31:53

For example, if

31:56

you wanted to change your

31:58

gender, would this be acceptable

32:01

and acceptable surgery? I tend to say yes

32:03

on that one. I can change

32:05

your entire body instead of

32:07

just parts of your body. Yeah. Yeah,

32:11

just just you know that makes

32:13

sense. It's like all at once, bam done.

32:16

What about someone who what if

32:18

this works and someone was

32:21

super rich and just wanted a different

32:23

body, like I want to

32:25

be eight inches taller and muscular,

32:29

so let's do this's million

32:32

dollars. Uh.

32:34

I would have an issue with that for

32:36

for one reason, and that would be that

32:39

you have just taken them

32:43

the body of a potential organ donor

32:45

that could have saved multiple lives of

32:47

people who needed those organs.

32:50

You took them because you wanted to be eight inches taller.

32:53

Other than that, if if there was

32:55

a yeah, well that's

32:57

a pretty big one. I don't even I don't even want to qualify

32:59

it with saying all than that, I have no problem with it, because

33:01

that's such a huge problem. It disqualifies

33:04

in my eyes. Uh.

33:06

Here's the good news, though, is that, um,

33:09

he doesn't have to get a percent

33:12

of these cells to remain intact.

33:14

There are studies out there, like you

33:16

know, legit studies that say, uh,

33:19

your your motor function, your basic motor function

33:21

can be preserved if you just get of

33:24

those cells to remain intact.

33:26

So, um, the Atlantic says,

33:28

if he failed a fuse every four or five, um,

33:33

he could fail on every I'm sorry,

33:35

four of every five nerve cells

33:37

and it still might succeed in there, right,

33:40

and well, the thing is is Canavero's

33:43

whole thing is anytime somebody raises

33:45

an objection to it, he's like peg poly

33:49

ethylene glycol will handle it. And

33:51

it does seem to work some pretty

33:53

amazing miracles. But the

33:56

it's not just some cure

33:58

all magic stuff that just fixes

34:00

everything. It remains to be seen and

34:04

what's kind of fishy is a lot of the um

34:07

there's some of the recent papers

34:09

on PEG and what an amazing

34:12

miracle compound it is are edited

34:14

by Cannivero himself. So

34:17

the guy who's saying, no, it's this miracle

34:20

substance you should read about it

34:22

is the one who's editing the stuff that he's telling

34:24

you to go read about. I

34:28

don't think we mentioned just like

34:30

an organ can be rejected, that it could

34:32

reject the body outright from the beginning,

34:35

which would be a catastrophic

34:38

failure. Um that

34:40

that would kill you if your your body

34:42

rejects your or your head. Yeah,

34:46

well, I'm just glad he's hooked up with Dr

34:49

Wren at least, because before that,

34:52

before they had made contact, he was he

34:54

was plowing full steam ahead, um

34:57

and still wants to. But he hadn't even

34:59

he wasn't trying it on mice and

35:02

monkeys, you know, Like

35:04

he hooked up with someone who was. I

35:06

was like, oh, well, you're you're doing the real work.

35:09

Let's get together on this. So his

35:11

um, his idea was that he

35:13

would have to practice on cadavers.

35:17

Yeah, he needed to practice on cadavers.

35:19

But apparently that would come after practicing

35:22

on um animals, and

35:25

apparently he according

35:27

to bioethesis, he

35:29

would be hard pressed to get approval even

35:31

to carry out an experiment

35:34

like this on animals these days, the

35:36

most medical ethics boards would be like, no,

35:39

this is unnecessary, this

35:41

is not you shouldn't be doing this, so don't

35:43

do that. At least in the United States, I should say,

35:45

well, he's never gonna do this here. He would

35:48

almost certainly have to do this. In China

35:51

they have a lot more latitude. I saw

35:53

there's this hospital in Vietnam that's

35:55

like US, US, we'll do it because

35:58

they probably can get funding and uh

36:02

press

36:03

means yeah, I would imagine.

36:07

I know they went to the Russians because

36:10

this gentleman is Russian and he thought he could get the

36:12

government to chip in and they said no. And

36:14

so now he is literally trying to raise money

36:17

by selling things, raise bread.

36:20

He's trying to raise bread by selling

36:22

like mugs and key

36:24

chains and stuff. This

36:26

is not a lie with his

36:29

head on, like these these muscular

36:31

bodies and stuff. Wow, So

36:33

it's uh I did see. I finally found it

36:36

said between ten and a hundred million

36:38

dollars, which is pretty big. Uh latitude

36:40

there, Yeah, I mean there's like there's

36:43

a it's pretty easy to point

36:45

at Canavero and be like, here, what's what's what's

36:47

your deal man? But it

36:50

makes it easy to to look

36:53

past um the

36:55

patient spiritanovs UM

36:58

situation, you know, like I'm

37:00

sure he wants this to work so

37:03

bad. Sure it's heartbreaking, you know, yeah,

37:05

I mean so much so that like he said,

37:07

he doesn't want to just be an expensive euthan

37:10

asia procedure. But he also

37:12

said, you know, I'm

37:16

headed toward death here soon, Like why

37:18

not? Yeah?

37:21

I saw one other thing. You got anything else there?

37:24

I saw that another objection to this

37:27

by the medical community would be that it

37:29

could conceivably raise the yuck factor.

37:32

That's what they call it UM among organ

37:34

donation, just

37:37

around among the general public.

37:39

And this yuck factor. I checked it out because

37:41

it was in scare quotes. It's

37:43

a real thing, UM and it's

37:46

basically the general

37:48

public's um discussed

37:50

toward bio like

37:54

bioaugmentation, weird

37:56

surgeries, UM, odd transplants.

37:59

This this head transplant, body

38:01

or body transplant or head transplant

38:03

falls right into that weird yuck factor,

38:06

almost like the Uncanny Valley. And

38:08

I read this article about it, and apparently

38:11

there's something there's a debate going on

38:14

on whether humans have an inner

38:16

wisdom of what is good

38:18

or bad or acceptable, and

38:20

when our yuck factor is activated, it's

38:23

actually an inner wisdom

38:25

that's saying that's not okay,

38:27

don't do that. And this this

38:29

author was arguing that that's not true,

38:31

that it's actually what is called

38:34

folk biology, that humans are

38:36

kind of prewired to have an

38:38

idea of what's natural and

38:40

what's normal, and we're just simply

38:42

grossed out when we're faced

38:45

with something that challenges that normalcy.

38:48

But it doesn't mean that it's right or wrong. There's

38:50

this debate over which one is correct, folk

38:53

biology or the

38:55

inner wisdom. That's

38:57

interesting. It is pretty interesting. Well, we

39:00

at an entire show in two

39:02

thousand and ten, I think January

39:05

or maybe it was June started the j and

39:07

it wasn't July. I

39:11

wrote it down, but I just threw it away anyway,

39:14

How organ donation works. That

39:17

was a good one. And the

39:20

therapeutic hypothermia want to check that out too.

39:22

Yeah, Well, if you want to know more about

39:24

this head transplant operation,

39:26

you can type those words in the search part. How

39:29

stuff works and it'll bring up a great article.

39:31

And since I said that, it's time for listener mayo,

39:37

I'm going to call this, um

39:40

what should I call this one? I'm gonna

39:42

call this anniversary

39:45

of the podcast. Hey

39:47

guys, my name is JP and I'm a business administration

39:50

major at Christopher Newport University,

39:53

currently studying at the University of

39:55

Glasgow. Uh

39:57

going into my senior year. Writing on my

40:00

twenty first birthday, which is also the

40:02

fourth anniversary that I began following

40:04

the podcast my little brother introduced me to

40:06

That's Why I sk and now immediately binged roughly

40:09

three episodes. I'm not sure how many people

40:11

right and saying this, but I can probably say listen

40:13

to every single one. And yes, I know the

40:15

episode in context of Hippie Rob's

40:18

emergence. They haven't talked about him

40:20

in a long time. No, he's been long gone.

40:23

He seems like he would be like an assistant to the

40:25

surgeon, you know,

40:28

hippie. I don't think that'd be a good idea.

40:30

No, No, it's a bad idea. And I don't mean a medical

40:32

assistant. I mean like a you know,

40:34

he did the jiu jitsu on

40:37

the Idiot questions. Maybe but it just be

40:39

some like clumsy like BrownHouse

40:42

kick that it's just like six inches

40:44

off the ground. The

40:46

past four years have been some of the most influential on

40:48

my life as a whole. Uh in your

40:51

podcast has played a huge part now I'm matured as

40:53

an adult through Chuck's soft

40:55

spoken tone and Josh's optimistic

40:57

demeanor. How about that? As

41:00

well as Jerry's elite producing abilities.

41:03

The podcast has made me look forward to Tuesday's

41:06

something I never thought was possible. I

41:08

guess he doesn't listen to Thursdays. Optimistic.

41:11

Yeah, optimistic demeanor that's

41:14

you never never would have called that one. Aside

41:16

from how much I enjoy that maybe has us confused.

41:19

Maybe because you have a soft spoken tone.

41:23

Aside from how much I enjoy the podcast,

41:25

you really shaped how I think things through as

41:27

well as my perspective on many issues. People

41:29

often forget that some matters have multiple

41:32

sides to them and that a full opinion should

41:34

be developed from all the facts. I

41:36

figured today was the most fitting to write in given how

41:38

much the show means to me, continue

41:41

to look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh

41:43

there you go, Uh, And I'm anxiously

41:45

waiting for the release of your next live tour schedule.

41:47

Please come to d c H.

41:49

I think we are at some point right. I've

41:53

even gone as far as debating whether to get

41:55

a tattoo excuse

41:57

me to two of the

42:00

iconic stuff you should know microphone,

42:02

but not sure Mom would approve of it. Um,

42:05

John, I'm gonna say, don't do that.

42:07

I don't know, John, Maybe you do it, don't do

42:09

it. I have high hopes

42:11

that you'll do You're optimistic demeanor.

42:15

Anyways, keeping keep doing what you're doing, guys.

42:17

I'll be cheering from the sideline as you continue towards

42:19

your goal of world domination. Cheers from

42:21

Scotland. John Patrick, Vitty, Oh

42:24

wow, and that was nice little touch at the

42:26

end. Thank you, Uh, and everybody

42:29

in Glasgow, Chuck, and I know it's

42:31

Glasgow, but we like saying Glasgow.

42:33

It rolls off the tongue. Did I say, gal

42:36

m, who

42:38

is that? John Patrick? That's

42:41

right? Thanks a lot, John, We appreciate

42:43

it. Uh. I say, go for the tattoo,

42:45

but probably shouldn't listen to me, I

42:47

say, don't. You should probably listen

42:49

to Chuck if you want to

42:51

know more about oh man, something's

42:54

wrong with me today, dude. If

42:57

you want to get in touch with me and Chuck like John

42:59

did, you can tweet to us at s Y s K

43:01

podcast or josh Im Clark. You can

43:04

hang out with us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff

43:06

you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck

43:08

Bryant. You can send us an email.

43:10

That stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com

43:12

and has always joined us sort of home on the web. Stuff

43:15

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43:21

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43:23

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