This is an interesting impossibility. Of course, it will NOT work!
Medical science has not yet succeeded in repairing nerve injuries caused by broken spinal cords. That is why there are so many paralyzed people on the planet. So I cannot be convinced that the surgeons can cut off a head and join it to a donor body whose spinal cord had already been decapitated, with full or even partial restoration of functions of the spinal nerves.
Interesting impossibility, though. Society could transplant the heads (and brains) of dying geniuses and transplant them onto the bodies of healthy but dumb people and criminals. LOL.
A team of elite surgeons from around the world will soon be attempting a medical
first — a full human head transplant. No, this is not a movie, sci-fi
novel, or tragically late April Fools’ prank. This is actually
happening, and no one knows if it will work or what it could mean if it
does.
The patient (read: guinea pig) is a 30-year-old Russian man named
Valery Spiridonov. He’s not just doing this for fun, though. Spiridonov
has a terminal form of spinal atrophy called Werdnig-Hoffman disease.
There’s no known medical treatment that will save his life, except
maybe taking his head off and placing it on a different, healthier body.
Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero will be in charge of decapitating and
re-capitating Spiridonov, following a procedure laid out in a paper
published in the journal Surgical Neurology International. The operation
is expected to take 36 hours and require 150 medical staff.
First, Spiridonov’s head and new body will be cooled to slow the rate
of cell decomposition. Then, doctors will hook up all the major blood
vessels in the neck to machines that will keep things flowing during the
transfer. The spinal cord will then be severed and the head will be
moved to the new body for attachment. Canavero plans to use polyethylene
glycol injections to get the cells and connective tissues to stick
together, binding the head to the new body. After that, it’s simply a
matter of connecting blood vessels, muscles, and nerves.
Doctors expect it will take up to a year for Spiridonov’s spinal cord
to completely fuse with the new body, but that’s far from the only
potential complication. No one really knows what switching bodies will
do to the brain. The exposure to completely different chemical and
electrical signals could drive a man mad. There’s also the possibility
the new body will reject Spiridonov’s head, even with powerful
anti-rejection drugs.
The project will officially launch in June as Canavero begins recruiting staff for the procedure. It could take place as early as next year. If this doesn’t work, there’s always the Futurama-style head in a jar.
The African continent at night is awesome. It is a vast land with much fewer city lights than Europe. But it is no longer the dark continent. This peaceful swathe of cool blue signifies hope and potential. If our people could just appreciate this enormous gift which God bestowed on us, and work together to harness the continent's huge resources, Africa would become the paradise it truly is.
We live in the Garden of Eden, designed, planted and nurtured by God Himself, yet we spend much of our time killing and hacking each other to death! The entire globe is the most wondrous creation of the Almighty. When you look at this tremendous piece of marble at night from space, it is stupendously and breathtakingly beautiful. The creator looked at what He created, and He was pleased.
The entire universe whose end we do not know sustains our galaxy and constellation. The moon is there to give us our tides and weather while illuminating the planet at night. The sun is there in its full glory to provide light and life. Our planet is the only one we know with life as we know it. And Man is at the center of it all. Today, I feel great to be a human being. It was all made for me. Thank you, Lord Almighty!
NASA Earth Observatory. Black Marble: Africa and Europe at night, as viewed by NASA’s Suomi Satellite.
There is no limit to the human capacity for learning and improvement. I am amazed at the transformation of out-going President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. The man had six weeks to reform and sell himself to Nigerian voters. Many of us doubted if the six week postponement of the 2015 General Elections in Nigeria would be enough for him to re-brand himself. Amazingly, the man succeeded beyond my wildest imagination.
1. GEJ put on his uniform as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of Nigeria and visited the war front. He looked Presidential, was confident and exuded charm and conviviality among his troops. This is what he would have done immediately the Chibok girls were abducted, if his advisers had allowed him.
2. Our soldiers routed and defeated the terrorists within six weeks, liberating many of our towns and LGAs that were under their occupation.
3. GEJ campaigned tirelessly and relentlessly in every nook and corner of the country, including Maiduguri which his mindless advisors never allowed him to visit in the past.
The fact is that if President Jonathan had done the things he did in six weeks during the entire period of six years when he occupied Aso Rock, Nigerian voters would have given him the mandate to continue for another four years in office.
But his greatest achievement, to my mind, is the statesmanship President Jonathan has displayed even in defeat at the polls. For the first time in Nigeria's history, an incumbent elected leader is conceding victory at the polls without recourse to courts and tribunals. He has saved the lives of many Nigerians, and history will certainly treat him with great respect as one of the founders of true democracy in this country.
When I was in
elementary school, a teacher gave my class this ethical dilemma to solve.
A young man is driving
a bus filled with several young persons. While speeding across a bridge, he
suddenly sees his mother standing in the middle of the bridge. The only way to
avoid hitting and killing her instantly is to swerve and crash into the river
below, in the process killing many of his passengers and probably himself too.
What would you do if you were that young driver?
Needless to say,
this ethical poser generated heated and endless debate among us. Up till date,
several decades afterwards, there appears to be no consensus as to the right
moral choice to make in such a situation. What we did not know then was that
the ethical dilemma we were confronted with as young pupils was the biggest
question debated by the two main contrasting theories in ethical philosophy – John
Stuart Mills’ Utilitarianism as opposed to the Categorical Imperatives which
form the central thesis in Immanuel Kant’s deontological moral philosophy.
Philosophers who
support utilitarianism argue that for any action to be moral and right, it must
maximize utility. Utility may be defined to include pleasure, economic
well-being and the lack of pain or suffering. Thus, the consequences of your
action determine whether it is right or good or moral. If we agree that it is
the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and
wrong, then the correct thing for out hypothetical driver to do in the moral dilemma
posed above is to drive right ahead and crush his mother to death, saving the
life of the several passengers in his bus. Of course, he can mourn and give her
a befitting burial later, but he would be satisfied that his action saved the
lives of several people and spared many other families the pain and agony of
burying their dead had he swerved and crashed into the river.
Not so, argues
Immanuel Kant who states in his deontological ethics or deontology that the
morality of an action is based on the action's adherence to a universal rule or
law, not on its consequences. For example, it is a universal law that one must
not lie. As far as this philosopher is concerned, therefore, there can never be
a ‘good’ lie. If a person who has the intention of murdering someone asks you
of his intended victim’s whereabouts, it is not morally right for you to lie,
you must tell the truth, no matter the consequences for the victim. For our
hapless speeding driver on the bridge with his mother standing in his way,
therefore, the categorical imperative would be for him to obey the universal
laws which state that you should honour your mother and father, and ‘thou shall
not kill.’ He should swerve his bus in order to avoid killing his mother,
whatever the consequences for his hapless passengers.
I am a utilitarian
moralist, a consequentialist to the core. Much as I admire Kant’s work and am
mystified by his complicated arguments and controversial conclusions on this
issue of morality, I believe that many evil doers can hide behind his so-called
duty ethics to perpetrate a lot of evil in society. For example, just because
it is universally accepted that a man must cater for his family, does it
justify Nigerian politicians diverting andstealing public funds, bringing misery and suffering to millions of other
Nigerians? This question is a valid philosophical poser considering that at the
trial of Nazi war criminal Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, he
was said to have declared "with great emphasis that he had lived his whole
life ... according to a Kantian definition of duty!"
Back to my
elementary school ethical dilemma, will I really be able to crush my own mother
to death on the bridge, saving the lives of my several passengers? I doubt it
very much. Even as a utilitarian, my basic instinct would be to brake and
swerve, damning the consequences. Maybe Kant added some value to our moral
philosophy after all. If only the man were not so long-winded and obscure in
his writings. Clarity prevents misinterpretation and misapplication of
concepts.
Kudos for reading this
long blog post to the very end! Can anyone respond to my ethical poser on
thieving and corrupt Nigerian politicians?
I do not think Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chairman, Ahmed Adamu Mu’azu has fled the country - the man is not a coward!
Politics of insults and calumny cannot move the country forward - I respect Mu'azu's decision not to participate in hurling insults at Buhari like other campaign coordinators of incumbent President Jonathan. If he stays away in Dubai indefinitely (until Saturday's election), he may be responding to pressures from the war hawks currently holding the Aso Rock incumbent to ransom.
On the other hand, if the man does come back as his party says, then I am right - Mu'azu is certainly not a coward.
I have an indigo perspective on people, ideas and things. I am often shocked when people I respect intellectually express ideas or do certain things which reveal extremely poor insight and foresight. Is it possible that things which are pretty obvious to some of us with the ability to see things from a higher plane are so hidden to other humans? Or, maybe, much of humanity is just being sinister, knowing the truth but saying and doing the opposite most of the time. I suspect the latter to be true.
Just a quick example. Watching the USA and NATO engineered collapse of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, it was obvious that the chaotic dispersal of his vast armoury of machine guns and missiles would lead to civil strife and more terrorism across Africa and beyond. What the hell were President Obama and his western allies thinking? The blood of literally hundreds of thousands of innocents slaughtered in Africa and the Middle East since then must be placed at their doorsteps. Thoughtless actions lead to thoughtless events, with grave consequences.
It is time for those with insight and foresight to speak up. Remaining silent is no longer an option.
I invite you to share your thoughts on people, ideas, events and things with me on this forum. People must be made to see the other side of the coin. On my part, I promise to post my frank views and comments in this blog, no matter whose ox is being gored.
