The doctor proposing to do this particular iteration is about half full of shit.
There is zero contention about the fact that you can do the stitching of the blood vessels and tubes and whatnot and have life support happen. Gotta deal with some CRAZY graft vs host disease with drugs, and there might be issues with the Vagus nerve being cut, but there have been head transplants on dogs and monkeys in the past.
But he proposes that he can regrow the spine. He is full of shit about that. There’s been small success stories now and then but nothing reliable.
Now, some people might not want to become a full quadriplegic with autonomic nervous system issues who needs to be on a ventilator in perpetuity. Some might.
Here is the REAL ethical issue of such a procedure: the donated body being used could have been carved up into a heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, digestive tract, kidneys, bones, skin… you are using all of that on ONE person when you could have parceled them out and saved eight people.
If the procedure works, you can estimate that its future application can be used to save N lives. You can assign an X% probability to the procedure working. As long as N*X is > 8, it would be more unethical to carve up the body and parcel out the organs.
Because the real question is if you save more lives using one body for one life, or one body for eight lives.
Unless (pardon me, this just occurred to me) you’re calculating that this one procedure will save all of those lives for a one-shot cost of eight lives.
Even so, all the future lives it saves will come at an opportunity cost of eight other lives not saved, right?
Perhaps I’m missing something, but this seems clear to me.
None of which is to say that the research isn’t worth doing anyway, necessarily.
I probably could have clarified: “N” stands for the number of lives you estimate this procedure could save above and beyond the “default”. In other words, “Net future lives saved with body-transplant technology” minus “Net future lives saved without body-transplant technology”
An example would be, say that there are not any viable hosts for a cadaver’s organs, so normally they would just have to cremate him which is +0 lives. But in this situation, they could transplant a head onto the body, which is +1 lives. And say that scenario plays out 50,000 times over the next however many years. So N=50,000.
Of course N will be much lower for you personally if you find that example (and other similar ones) unrealistic.
Assuming this procedure worked generally, is it more ethical to donate the whole body to one person, or to parcel it up and donate the organs individually? If the latter, is there an ethical application for this procedure?
If the successful procedure is ethical, I’m inclined to err on the side of assuming the research is ethical. If it’s not, we get into the much more complicated problem of a shortage of donated organs, despite what appears to be an available effective and ethical solution (making organ donation opt-out instead of opt-in).
So, in a sane world, I’d be inclined to conclude it was ethical because there wouldn’t be an organ shortage. In an insane world, I’m somewhat leery of ethical conclusions that assume no other ethically mandated changes are allowable.
The doctor proposing to do this particular iteration is about half full of shit.
There is zero contention about the fact that you can do the stitching of the blood vessels and tubes and whatnot and have life support happen. Gotta deal with some CRAZY graft vs host disease with drugs, and there might be issues with the Vagus nerve being cut, but there have been head transplants on dogs and monkeys in the past.
But he proposes that he can regrow the spine. He is full of shit about that. There’s been small success stories now and then but nothing reliable.
Now, some people might not want to become a full quadriplegic with autonomic nervous system issues who needs to be on a ventilator in perpetuity. Some might.
Here is the REAL ethical issue of such a procedure: the donated body being used could have been carved up into a heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, digestive tract, kidneys, bones, skin… you are using all of that on ONE person when you could have parceled them out and saved eight people.
Re: ethics
If the procedure works, you can estimate that its future application can be used to save N lives. You can assign an X% probability to the procedure working. As long as N*X is > 8, it would be more unethical to carve up the body and parcel out the organs.
Wouldn’t the real equation be N*X > 8N ?
Because the real question is if you save more lives using one body for one life, or one body for eight lives.
Unless (pardon me, this just occurred to me) you’re calculating that this one procedure will save all of those lives for a one-shot cost of eight lives.
Even so, all the future lives it saves will come at an opportunity cost of eight other lives not saved, right?
Perhaps I’m missing something, but this seems clear to me.
None of which is to say that the research isn’t worth doing anyway, necessarily.
I probably could have clarified: “N” stands for the number of lives you estimate this procedure could save above and beyond the “default”. In other words, “Net future lives saved with body-transplant technology” minus “Net future lives saved without body-transplant technology”
An example would be, say that there are not any viable hosts for a cadaver’s organs, so normally they would just have to cremate him which is +0 lives. But in this situation, they could transplant a head onto the body, which is +1 lives. And say that scenario plays out 50,000 times over the next however many years. So N=50,000.
Of course N will be much lower for you personally if you find that example (and other similar ones) unrealistic.
Assuming this procedure worked generally, is it more ethical to donate the whole body to one person, or to parcel it up and donate the organs individually? If the latter, is there an ethical application for this procedure?
If the successful procedure is ethical, I’m inclined to err on the side of assuming the research is ethical. If it’s not, we get into the much more complicated problem of a shortage of donated organs, despite what appears to be an available effective and ethical solution (making organ donation opt-out instead of opt-in).
So, in a sane world, I’d be inclined to conclude it was ethical because there wouldn’t be an organ shortage. In an insane world, I’m somewhat leery of ethical conclusions that assume no other ethically mandated changes are allowable.