@detroitmechworks

Still love the concept that the reason that humans never seem to spiritually evolve as a species is that our species is not really capable of spiritual enlightenment. When we evolve, we stop being human.

Your suggestion is a good one: instead of putting a head on a head transplant "recipient", let's put the head on a lion. That would reveal our inner nature somewhat but lions don't kill for sport and they don't want to steal your property.

That pathetic grubbing for more that only the extremely rich seem to have. Perhaps they have a little insight into where they'll be going in the next life, and are in no rush to hurry there.

Still love the concept that the reason that humans never seem to spiritually evolve as a species is that our species is not really capable of spiritual enlightenment. When we evolve, we stop being human.

@Ellen North @Ellen North "immortality, you are fleeting, a dream never to be be attained, like a desert mirage, seemingly so real and yet deceptive".

And the result, if it worked, would be that of an old head on young shoulders, with an aging brain which has been kept without oxygen for the duration of at least portions of the transfer and 'frozen'.

This is precisely the dilemma that the Italian "surgeon", Cavanero, seems to overlook. The brain, newly transplanted onto a younger body, would still face the same aging issues as the untransplanted head. Yet, perhaps, enough of these Psychopaths That Be will fall for this scam and submit themselves to instant oblivion; yes these very same morons, who, despite their wealth, bet heavily on Hillary Clinton to win in '16.

As a technical matter, this whole process will yield two deaths as the surgery is just as idiotic as the Italian genius who conceived it (apologies to Heinlein, whom must clearly have been delirious when he wrote the convoluted plot to "I will fear no evil".

Has anyone ever not read Robert Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil? Worked out well, at least for about a year, in fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil

Plot summary

The story takes place in the early 21st century against a background of an overpopulated Earth with a violent, dysfunctional society. Elderly billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is being kept alive through medical support and decides to have his brain transplanted into a new body. He advertises an offer of a million dollars for the donation of a body from a brain-dead patient. Smith omits to place any restriction on the sex of the donor, so when his beautiful young female secretary, Eunice Branca, is murdered, her body is used. He changes his name to Joan Eunice Smith, with the first name given "the two-syllable pronunciation" Jo-Ann to mimic the sound of his original name.

After Smith awakens after the transplant, he discovers he can communicate with Eunice's personality. They agree not to reveal her existence, fearing that they would be judged insane and locked up. Smith's identity is unsuccessfully challenged by his descendants, who hope to inherit his fortune. Smith and Eunice decide to have a baby together and so they (Joan and Eunice) are artificially inseminated using Smith's sperm from the sperm bank. Joan explores her new sexuality at length. She goes to visit Eunice's widower, Joe Branca, to help reconcile him to what has happened.

Joan marries her lawyer, Jake Salomon, and moves her household and friends onto a boat. Jake has a massive rupture of a large blood vessel in his brain and dies, but his personality is saved and joins Smith and Eunice in Joan's head. She (Joan, Eunice and Jake) emigrates to the moon to find a better future for her child. Once there, her body starts to reject her (Smith's) transplanted brain. She dies during childbirth.

Writing

Heinlein suffered from life-threatening peritonitis after completing the first draft of this novel. He remained ill for the next two years and it is thought to have been published without his usual editing and polish.[1]

But this required a very freshly dead body (kept viable by life support to maintain organs, etc.?) from a young, healthy victim with a fatal brain injury, (in that case for a brain, rather than a head, transplant,) and even in the book, it was presented as a miracle that the result was not a blind/deaf/paralyzed/vegetable. (I expect that it would be easy enough for The Psychopaths That Be to arrange for a good supply of such bodies.)

And the result, if it worked, would be that of an old head on young shoulders, with an aging brain which has been kept without oxygen for the duration of at least portions of the transfer and 'frozen'.

And the article speaks of chilling specifically 'the brain', so is that being removed from the head and replaced as well, after the lower connections are completed?

The guy's apparently practiced on a set of cadavers and on a monkey, of which it's said that he put the poor little tyke down after less than a day, (unless the monkey simply died or was only 'alive' on life support following surgery) so would, I'd suspect, have had no idea if he'd had any success.

And his first live human test will be on a desperate non-billionaire, not One Who Matters.

Maybe they'd better stick to transfusions of baby blood - or not.