severed head that keeps on living

[splodenode]

would it be possible to cut somethings head off and keep it alive by pumping oxygenated blood through its veins?

 

[Amaris]

I don't think it would be possible.


J.

 

[FemurBone]

I would say it is possible, but not with current technology.

 

[Venardhi]

Perhaps as a very VERY controlled decapitation, going each nerve and vein and muscle at a time and hooking them up to the surrogate body as you went. Would likely take several failures to eventually find the right method though.

 

[Zachary Smith]

Believe it or not there is a machine that is PATENTED that's sole purpose is to keep a severed head alive. This is absolutely no joke. I used to work at a Library of Science, Engineering and Technology which was also a Patent Repository. We often looked up patents on rolls of microfilm in order to copy them and send them off to people who ordered them for reasons unknown. Patents are assigned a number and you scroll through the microfilm until you get to the number you're looking for but sometimes you must scroll past any number of OTHER patents before getting to the one you want. In the course of doing this, someone, I don't know who in the departement, stumbled onto teh patent for the severed head machine. It was, of course, promptly printed up and hung on the wall of Document Services for ages after that, marveled at by any number of wondering eyes.

Seriously, no joke. Such a device is patented. I no longer could tell you the patent number but it exists. I've seen it. I even looked it up once ON FILM to confirm it was there.

 

[Unicron]

I believe it. Someone else patented an eyeball massager.

 

[FordSVT]

The Soviets did experiments in the 50s where they grafted a dog head onto another dog. They lived for a few weeks. Rumor has it that the Americans and Soviets also did experiments on chimps and monkeys but it's not really substantiated.

Can't say it would surprise me if they did given what we do know, and lots of other strange medical experiments have been carried out over the decades.

 

[scottydog]

Gross. Sewing heads onto the wrong bodies sounds too much like those horrific Nazi medical experiments during WW2.

 

[splodenode]

scottydog said:
Gross. Sewing heads onto the wrong bodies sounds too much like those horrific Nazi medical experiments during WW2.

godwin?

 

[TerriO]

splodenode said:

scottydog said:
Gross. Sewing heads onto the wrong bodies sounds too much like those horrific Nazi medical experiments during WW2.

godwin?

Okay, I've been watching this to see how it was going to evolve. I'm not sure how such a thread couldn't have been expected to not go into Godwin's territory, but it has. Points in favor of the few who took this as serious discussion, in that it took quite a bit longer than I expected to get here. My thanks to you guys.

Let's just put an end to this, and if you want to start a more serious thread on the subject of transplants, splodenode, you're welcome to do so.