IUBio

Head (or body!) transplants?

Brian Scott brians at interlog.com
Thu Apr 3 11:27:01 EST 1997


In article <ks5ziLAt64QzEwzT at bnclib.demon.co.uk>,
Diane Pritchatt  <diane at bnclib.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I have to say that I think in reality such a possibility would present
>enormous ethical problems.  Who would give their body to be joined up to
>someone else's head?  Do donors leaving their bodies for medical
>research think that they are going to be used in this sort of way?  I
>expect that the majority hope that their organs will be given to other
>people individually, eg kidney transplants, corneal grafts, etc.
>Informed consent, I bet, would mean people would revile at the thought
>of this being done after their deaths.

I think I agree with you here.  Dividing up the organs would potentially 
help many more people and thus be a much better use of a donated body.  
White's goals as stated in this programme were to help paralyzed people 
who's organs are failing.  He said that the major cause of death in these 
people is something like Complete Body Dysfunction, where most of the 
organs deteriorate.  These people would have their heads transplanted to 
a donor body which would keep it alive but still would not be able to 
control the body as the spinal cord would not be intact.  

>
>I find it very distrurbing that Dr White is able to go to the Ukraine to
>conduct experiments on humans, when his own countrymen won't allow this,
>for ethical reasons in his own country.  The Ukrainians might not have
>access to such stringent ethical boards in their own country, or perhaps
>are too poor - no reason to go and conduct unethical experiments on
>them.  At the risk of being reactionary, does this not smack of 'medical
>experiments' in Nazi Germany, on the Jews and other dispossessed groups
>of unfortunate individuals?

What is ethical in North America changes often, and not necessarily for 
the better.  Another culture might consider such experiments appropriate 
and to have a compassionate goal and thus allow and encourage them to be 
done.  To me, ethics is a relative thing and there is nothing inherently 
unethical about this sort of experimentation.  Forty years from now the 
prevailing view might be that it is perfectly reasonable to conduct such 
experiments, and we might consider it unethical to withhold the 
potential benefits from future generations.

This programme on TLC addressed such a question.  Many people consider 
germ-line gene therapy to be unethical which is why it is illegal to 
conduct such experiments on humans.  Families with children dying of 
inherited disorders might disagree (those that were interviewed on this 
programme certainly did) as to them it seems that generations of their 
offspring are being sentenced to death and misery associated with 
carrying these defective genes because it is considered unethical to 
manipulate the human genome in this way.  

 
> >I was recently shown an article in 'Brain' from the 1950's, about a
>German doctor who conducted experiments on people in the eastern bloc
>after the war - destroying groups of nerves systematically in their
>bodies, to see how they reacted.  Again, I found that most disturbing,
>and what was more, it appeared in a mainstream and highly respected
>research journal such as Brain, under the auspices of genuine research
>for the 'good' of patients.  Just because such an article appears in a
>well known journal, I believe it should not negate, or indeed cloud, our
>response to the ethics of conducting such experiments.
>

Again, what is ethical?  I'm sure many in this newsgroup will be able to 
relate the details of this story.... I recall an incident where a lab was 
conducting experiments on primates where (I believe) limbs or nerves were 
severed for some reason I can't recall.  Animal rights activists found 
out about this and managed to get the experiments stopped BUT also 
prevented the scientists from sacrificing the animals.  Thus the animals 
were to be kept alive "suffering" in some terrible state.  The animals 
rights people considered the experiments to be unethical and yet what 
they did seems to be even more unethical to me.  I believe the scientists 
had the ruling overturned after years of legal fighting and were 
eventually allowed to sacrifice the animals.

Anyway, I think TLC will be repeating this programme later this month.  
You might find it interesting.  I'll try to find out when.

Brian


-- 
Brian Scott           | "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things 
brians at interlog.com   |  which he can afford to let alone."
Dept. of Physiology   |
University of Toronto |  - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)



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