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‘So, it was a successful procedure, if you consider paralysis, lack of consciousness and a lifespan of less than a day as indicators of “success”.’

UD laughed, years ago, when her friend Paul Laffoley assured her that head transplants were just around the corner. She felt guilty for laughing, because Paul sincerely believed in things like that.

And now in his visionary way he turns out to have anticipated Sergio Canavero.

Although the procedure isn’t quite there yet. The procedure described in my title was on a monkey.

Here’s the same writer, for The Guardian, on Canavero’s latest one, using a human.

[T]his recent successful human head transplant? It was on corpses! Call me a perfectionist if you must, but I genuinely think that any surgical procedure where the patients or subjects die before it even starts is really stretching the definition of “success” to breaking point.

Margaret Soltan, November 18, 2017 7:58AM
Posted in: march of science

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2 Responses to “‘So, it was a successful procedure, if you consider paralysis, lack of consciousness and a lifespan of less than a day as indicators of “success”.’”

  1. Bill R Says:

    When the surgeon and patient can do a duet of “Putting on the Ritz”, I’ll take it seriously.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfoaWHsdTNU

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    LOL. Yes – that’s one of the classics.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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