From: Joao Pedro (jpnitya@mail.esoterica.pt)
Date: Wed Oct 22 1997 - 22:39:52 MDT
Hi!
Prof. Jose Gomes Filho wrote:
> After the researches evolute more, let's just transplant our brains to our
> decerebrated clone, and earn some more
> life years... (as I had already previewed as obvious...( while we not
> artificialize our brains...)).
First of all I would like to point out that I don't
think you should talk of brain transplants, you should talk of body
transplants. It's not because of any convention it's just because I
think that what is being transplanted is not you but to you and since
you are your brain, you can't transplant yourself, you can only make
transplants of organs to yourself. Size is not important here and your
brain can only receive transplants, in this case, body transplants.
About body transplants using cloning to create new bodies, it's not such
a futuristic
achievement. Did you know that there has already been body transplants
is monkeys and dogs? And that there are plans to try it on humans on a
near future? Besides, human cloning can be technically possible in a
very short time (some claim that it is already possible in the present).
Damien Broderick wrote:
> Other mammals grow big and strong far faster
> than we do, so maybe the latency plateau can be bypassed in decorticate
> preparations.
I'm not sure about this (so don't jump on me if I'm wrong) but I think
that there is a relation between the time a mammal takes to reach sexual
maturity and the size of the brain. We are the mammal with longest
"childhood" and yet we are not the mammal with the more mass. If you
were to clone brainless humans (which is technically debatable) I would
say it would take much less than 19 years for you to get a fully grown
human.
den Otter wrote:
> Apart from that, transplanting your brain is only useful if you're not too
> old, and have a healthy brain. The elderly, people with brain tumors,
> Altzheimer's and the like wouldn't be helped much by brain transplants.
> If such transplants became standard, the no 1 killers would be strokes
> and cancers/degenerative diseases in the brain (instead of heart attacks
> lung cancer and the like).
The big problem is that it's not that linear that you are going to earn
much more life years
with this kind of procedure. Your neurons might die because of the death
of the cells that support them (the glial cells) and since you won't
transplant these cells, you would still die. Besides, the inherited risk
to this kind of procedure is (and will be for quite some time) very high
so it might not be worth it (I won't even mention the financial
resources for such operation). On the other hand, it might allow for
your
body to better remove the dangerous toxins that accumulate in the brain
(called age pigments) and therefore gain you years of life (since the
immune system and the whole body will be new, it will work better). I
wrote
about body transplants in my site, in my life extension section and I'm
currently developing that area.
Personally I think that avoiding aging for us (already developed adults)
is an interesting problem itself. Even that we do find a way to correct
all the errors in the genome that cause aging, it will be very difficult
to save us (I'm writing an article about that, BTW). There are a few
theories but none is currently technically possible, which means that if
we did find the genetic causes for aging (by far our best hope to
control aging) we would still age and die. What do you think about it?
Two more things of different subjects; Prof. Jose Gomes Filho, eu nunca
respondi 'a tua mensagem porque siceramente nao tinha nada
para dizer e nao por falta de educacao ou esquecimento.
Anders Sandberg, I heard you were a neurologist or something like that.
If that is true I would like to ask you a few questions: Can human
neurons divide in adulthood? What about songbirds neurons (I read they
could)? If you answer yes, can you tell how that happens or where can I
find more information about it.
See ya,
--
Hasta la vista...
"Life's too short to cry, long enough to try." - Kai Hansen
Reason's Triumph at: http://homepage.esoterica.pt/~jpnitya/
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