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Head in the Clouds

Sergio Canavero claims he’s carried out the world’s first human head transplant; a surgery he’s been hyping up for over two years. Canavero claims to have successfully completed the head transplant using corpses. While that would technically demonstrate the attachment (or reattachment) of nerves and blood vessels, there are many other factors that would prohibit the procedure from having any real practical application.

“I work with our group here that does face transplants at NYU, and we can barely make those work,” Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine, told Futurism “A head transplant, to people here, is ludicrous. We can barely keep the face from being rejected, much less all the tissues of the head.”

“The way he talks about head transplants, it’s like unscrewing a bulb from a socket and putting in a new one,” explained Caplan. “But obviously the chemistry where the new brain will be exposed, and the neural inputs, will be very different. Even if you could keep somebody alive – which I doubt, because of immune rejection – but even if you could, I think they’d be insane, because the brain wouldn’t be able to process the new environment. I think that’s a limit on head transplants, generally.”

Caplan doesn’t expect to see a successful head transplant any time soon, if ever. He does see regenerative medicine and research into artificial intelligence as being more likely to bear fruit in this area. Head transplants, meanwhile, may one day be compared to archaic procedures like purging and leeching.

Spinal Cords

“It’s despicable and dangerous for real science,” said Caplan. “I say that because it’s basically been announcements by press release. He’s set up shop in China because no one else in the world has any credence in what he’s doing. He hasn’t demonstrated in animals that he can do what he says he can do, and there’s no reason not to.”

Caplan refers to the fact that while Canavero has performed surgeries on monkeys and rats, there are doubts about his claims to have reconnected the spinal cord, and he has not successfully kept the animals alive or conscious for any significant amount of time.

Canavero’s purported monkey head transplant did not include any attempt to reconnect the spinal cord, meaning that even if the surgery went off without a hitch, the patient would be paralyzed. In terms of real-world benefit, though, if someone was to successfully demonstrate the ability to repair a spinal cord, that would have more utility to medicine than a head transplant procedure.

“If he did know how to make the spinal cord regenerate, there are literally millions of people worldwide with damaged and severed spinal cords,” Caplan explained. “Instead of yammering on incessantly about head transplants, if he had something to help them, he should be using it with them – that’s the natural place to go.”

Collateral Damage

Claims like those being made by Canavero muddy the waters of what’s actually possible with modern technology. That doesn’t just affect people working to advance the field of transplantation; it also impacts the wider scientific community.

“People believe that scientists who are using powerful technologies will just screw around with them, and it gives a bad reputation to mainstream scientists,” said Caplan. “It looks like they’ll try cloning, or they’ll try this, or they’ll try to make superbabies. You keep saying , ‘well, the technology isn’t close for any of those things in humans.’ But then this guy comes along and gets a lot of press attention, and so he casts doubt on the trustworthiness of mainstream scientists and doctors.”

“He also does one other thing, which is that he offers false hope,” Caplan added. “There are people out there with paralyzed bodies, and people dying of terrible diseases, who think, ‘maybe I could transplant my head.’ It’s cruel to them, and then they kind of get angry with disappointment when the technology doesn’t deliver.”

Scientists and doctors who aim to push the limits of modern medicine have ethical responsibilities. If they attempt to misrepresent the scope of their work, they can harm not just their peers but the very people their research is purported to benefit.

One big question with this theory is: are we the only universe out there. With our current technology, we are limited to observations within this universe because the universe is curved and we are inside the fishbowl, unable to see the outside of it (if there is an outside.)

There are at least five theories why a multiverse is possible, as a 2012 Space.com article explained

1. We don't know what the shape of space-time is exactly. One prominent theory is that it is flat and goes on forever. This would present the possibility of many universes being out there. But with that topic in mind, it's possible that universes can start repeating themselves. That's because particles can only be put together in so many ways. More about that in a moment.

2. Another theory for multiple universes comes from "eternal inflation." Based on research from Tufts University cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, when looking at space-time as a whole, some areas of space stop inflating like the Big Bang inflated our own universe. Others, however, will keep getting larger. So if we picture our own universe as a bubble, it is sitting in a network of bubble universes of space. What's interesting about this theory is the other universes could have very different laws of physics than our own, since they are not linked.

3. Or perhaps multiple universes can follow the theory of quantum mechanics (how subatomic particles behave), as part of the "daughter universe" theory. If you follow the laws of probability, it suggests that for every outcome that could come from one of your decisions, there would be a range of universes — each of which saw one outcome come to be. So in one universe, you took that job to China. In another, perhaps you were on your way and your plane landed somewhere different, and you decided to stay. And so on.

4. Another possible avenue is exploring mathematical universes, which, simply put, explain tht the structure of mathematics may change depending in which universe you reside. "Aa mathematical structure is something that you can describe in a way that's completely independent of human baggage," said theory-proposer Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as quoted in the 2012 article. "I really believe that there is this universe out there that can exist independently of me that would continue to exist even if there were no humans."

5. And last but not least as the idea of parallel universes. To go back to the idea that space-time is flat, the number of possible particle configurations in multiple universes would be limited to 10^10^122 distinct possibilities, to be exact. So, with an infinite number of cosmic patches, the particle arrangements within them must repeat — infinitely many times over. This means there are infinitely many "parallel universes": cosmic patches exactly the same as ours (containing someone exactly like you), as well as patches that differ by just one particle's position, patches that differ by two particles' positions, and so on down to patches that are totally different from ours.

Arguing against a parallel universe

Not everyone agrees with the parallel universe theory, however. A 2015 article on Medium by astrophysicist Ethan Siegal agreed that space-time could go on forever in theory, but said that there are some limitations with that idea.

The key problem is the universe is just under 14 billion years old. So our universe's age itself is obviously not infinite, but a finite amount. This would (simply put) limit the number of possibilities for particles to rearrange themselves, and sadly make it less possible that your alternate self did get on that plane after all to see China.

Also, the expansion at the beginning of the universe took place exponentially because there was so much "energy inherent to space itself," he said. But over time, that inflation obviously slowed — those particles of matter created at the Big Bang are not continuing to expand, he pointed out. Among his conclusions: that means that multiverses would have different rates of inflation and different times (longer or shorter) for inflation. This decreases the possibilities of universes similar to our own.

"Even setting aside issues that there may be an infinite number of possible values for fundamental constants, particles and interactions, and even setting aside interpretation issues such as whether the many-worlds-interpretation actually describes our physical reality," Siegal said, "the fact of the matter is that the number of possible outcomes rises so quickly — so much faster than merely exponentially — that unless inflation has been occurring for a truly infinite amount of time, there are no parallel universes identical to this one."

But rather than seeing this lack of other universes as a limitation, Siegal instead takes the philosophy that it shows how important it is to celebrate being unique. He advises to make the choices that work for you, which "leave you with no regrets." That's because there are no other realities where the choices of your dream self play out; you, therefore, are the only person that can make those choices happen.µ