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View Winners → Dorothy’s Place: Transplants?
Arcadia Weekly Sep 09, 2016
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– Courtesy photo.
By Dorothy Denne
How long since the breaking news of the first human heart transplant? Seems such a short time for something that today is so common. There are humans walking around all over the world with someone else’s heart, lung, liver, kidney, pancreas. The list goes on.
Medical science is considering human brain transplants. Now I find that really scary. Who exists when the transplant is completed?
How does that brain function in its new body? Does it take with it just its abilities or does it carry all its stored memories and learned lessons?
Think about it. How many times have you said, “If I had only known then what I know now,” or “If only my body could do the things it used to do.” Could it, would it, should it?
What if they put an 80-year-old brain in an 18-year-old body? Turn that around. What if they put an 18-year-old brain in an 80-year-old body? A mutant what?
Given a brain transplant as the premise, this column could take any number of turns. It could discuss the ethical issue. It could discuss emotional ramifications. It could discuss physical possibilities or impossibilities. Again, the list goes on.
Just too much for this old brain to handle right now.