[ExI] Will head transplants be the new life extension method?

[spike]

>… On Behalf Of spike
Subject: Re: [ExI] Will head transplants be the new life extension method?

 

>>…Where would the transplanted body come from?  

 

>… and death row inmates…spike

 

 

On that last bit, I can even imagine a reprieve of sorts, or a kind of partial one.  We could offer to allow the condemned prisoner a pardon if he agrees to swap bodies with a sick person.  

 

That notion solves the cruel and unusual angle on the capital punishment debates, sort of.  Or perhaps it opens a new one.  We can imagine states going to forms of execution which would kill the brain but not damage the body much, such as immersing the prisoner pure nitrogen for a couple minutes, brain dies, body scarcely notices, gets a new honest head.

 

On the other hand, if the stem cell guys work out a means to reconnect the spinal cord, then the person who received the body eventually retrains the control system so she can walk about.  Then she goes to states which do not currently allow capital punishment and goes about telling everyone how she is alive thanks to a body transplant from a murderer, and that the murderer was given a couple more years of life as well, etc.  That might encourage the rest of the states to pass laws allowing capital punishment with the option for body transplant followed by a pardon.

 

spike 

 

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