Another elite option for endless happiness and enjoyment of wealth

What is it that even the richest can't afford despite their insane wealth? No, it's not more money--they already have more than they and twenty generations of offspring can spend in one life--IT IS MORE LIFETIME. An enterprising Italian physician has come up with the cure for those yearnings of immortality (I almost said "immorality", but they've already got the market cornered on that.

Dr. Sergio Canavero says he has the cure for immortal life: a head transplant!

Speaking in Vienna, Sergio Canavero said he will perform the 24-hour surgery in China because the United States and Europe will not allow him to do the procedure. He said sadly, "The Americans did not understand." He told USA Today, "No American medical institute or center would pursue this, and there is no will by the U.S. government to support it.”

And why not? It’s only a matter of simultaneously severing the spinal cords of the donor and recipient, then placing the recipient's brain in a cooling device to reach a state of deep hypothermia to prevent its immediate death before it is attached to the body.

Step 1: finding a suitable subject

Just think of the consequences! Bubba could have a new dingus with which to assail the younger generation, if only his brain remembered how to do it. The Evil Queen could go on more book tours, touting her scribbles got ever-diminishing sales. And Dubious Donna could tell us more fables about her and Bernie building sand castles on the banks of the Potomac!

Technical advice on decapitation could be sought from the House of Saud, or the cheaper version by ISIS.

Just think of the havoc a transgender transplant would cause with the Evangelical Right, let alone the census bureau. Who would get the social security number? The head recipients or the soma recipients?

This story has been reviewed for accuracy by the AU School of medicine

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Not the operation but the fact that the Clintons and the rest of the scum like them could possibly find a way to keep fucking us for generations to come.

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snoopydawg's picture

let's start now and transplant heads on them that have some empathy for the people that they are willing to let die.

Instead of trying to live longer, they should quit working for more money and retire to enjoy their lives with their money. Why keep working and dressing in suits and ties every day? I've never understood why rich people don't just enjoy their lives if they have money.

I agree with pro left. I'm looking forward to the next generation of the Clintons.... Yuck!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

riverlover's picture

for youth factors.

Too much money to ever spend. No wonder the urge to meddle in the affairs of a country. Are they planning to terraform Mars for an off-planet property?

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Centaurea's picture

I guess the wealthy "I want to live forever" crowd finally figured out the downsides to cryonic preservation. With cryonics, you have to die first. Then they deep-freeze your body, awaiting a time in the future when a cure is found for what killed you and a method for the re-animation of corpses is invented.

Who wants to wait until they die to become immortal? Do it now! Kill your physical body, find a new one, and you can live forever! Or at least until the new body wears out, at which point another lucky donor will be found. What could possibly go wrong?

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

detroitmechworks's picture

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. Wink

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Alligator Ed's picture

@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.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

Suggested reading: That Hideous Strength (but not at night!)

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

detroitmechworks's picture

@TheOtherMaven I normally am not a fan of his theology, but he does have a good point about the pursuit of "Progress" to the point where it is itself a religion.

(As I grew older, I find I enjoy Lewis' rhetoric more than his worldview. He was a great thinker, but a bit hamstrung by his religion, IMHO.)

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@detroitmechworks

(As I grew older, I find I enjoy Lewis' rhetoric more than his worldview. He was a great thinker, but a bit hamstrung by his religion, IMHO.)

A common problem with Britons of his age (he was born in 1898). His contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien (born 1892) did a better job of avoiding the religious hamstringing.....

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

detroitmechworks's picture

@thanatokephaloides on the British psyche, at least as far as faith went. My personal favourite author, Arthur C. Clarke was born in 1917, and has a still hopeful and fairly Episcopal worldview, but it's seriously tempered by the idea that his ideas could and probably are wrong...

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Amanda Matthews's picture

as spare parts for the 1%.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

detroitmechworks's picture

@Amanda Matthews the story will of course be that those people being harvested are "Criminals".

Their crimes will be classified.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks

Hey - JOBS!

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Amanda Matthews

I note with some trepidation that the only part of the intestines that cannot now be transplanted is the rectum:

Because of the nervous complexities of the rectum, doctors are unable to transplant that section of the colon. Individuals that lose their rectum due to Crohn’s, UC or cancer cannot have a colon transplanted and must live out the remainder of their lives with an ileostomy or “J” pouch”.

source

So it would seem that the one part the 1% assholes can't replace yet is, well..... their assholes.....

"And now you know the rest of the story!" -- Paul Harvey

Wink

EDIT: fixed typo

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

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.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

detroitmechworks's picture

@Ellen North Was always a bit more partial to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"...

IMHO, IWFNO had all of the worst aspects of Heinlein's characters, amplified. His rich hero got to experience everything, treat everyone else as if they were morons and parasites, and yet magically has a voice in his head that helps him along... Just felt bad, IMHO, and didn't care for it one bit. Of course I don't like much of late period Heinlein admittedly.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks

Lol, that being why these reality-insulated billionaires seeking 'immortality' are again following fiction as their guide to the reality they believe can be created, if they only have enough money to pour into whatever scam they fall for.

They went Galt and now they want to be immortal - even while they destroy the existence of Life they seek to control and eventually want to replace with unliving mechanicals.

Psychopaths... go figure...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Alligator Ed's picture

@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".

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mimi's picture

made me immortal, that would be a reason to kill myself immediately. May be the doctor needs a new head? One with a brain?

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