I was always really bothered when people are talking about that “head transplant”. Is that not more of a “full body transplant”?

Brain transplants are purely science fiction for now, but while it might be called a brain transplant, it’s more of a body transplant. Assuming you’re taking a useless body with a useful brain and a useful body with a useless brain, and swapping, the person, being in the brain, is getting a new body. The owner of the brain-dead body wouldn’t get a new brain. Their family would get the useless brain and useless body to bury.

If that sounds grim, it’s because it is, and the potential for abuse would be so great. Imagine a random wealthy, 79-year-old pederast dictator who would demand that some family give up their ten-year-old child to receive his brain. Maybe they get compensated for their child, maybe they just get to keep living. Is that something medical science should allow? Would there be any condition in which it’s ethically or morally okay? And what if, with healthy body replacements, a brain can only live 150 years? After the second or third transplant, what would be the ethics or morality of taking a good mind (say, one that might cure cancer) and giving that brain 10 more years of life, versus giving a 10-year-old only 10 more years before that body just drops dead at 20 (maybe to be a recipient of another brain with a dying body, but to make things fun, let’s say a body can only get a new brain once: remove the second brain, and a third one cannot be successfully transplanted in)?

i think they counts as a body transplant. therefore you still want to be the recipient

Kidney might be similar. Both people are likely to be left with one functioning kidney, but one has to take anti-rejection drugs.

A partial liver transplant and a bone marrow transplant is even more along the lines of better to be the donor.

And fecal transplants are pretty easy on both parties, but moreso the donor.

Thought on this before. I don’t think any of us could take the change without going insane and likely catatonic.

It’s not just about learning coordination all over again, getting used to new physical quirks. Different hormones, reflexes, nerve wiring, gut bacteria, senses, just too much to handle. Hell, I’d go into shock if your dropped me in my own body from 20-years back.

They always talk about putting a brain from one body into another that doesn’t have a brain, but nobody has yet tried to give someone two brains at once. If more wrinkles is better, add more wrinkles by adding more brain.