Read your story about head transplant in China with great interest. Several years ago I was in contact with Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon at Case Western Reserve Medical Center, who was doing research on brain transplants. He had progressed to the point where he could do a successful transplant of a monkey brain to another body.  The monkey lived but could not run around and eat bananas.  He believed that the technology would exist in the near future to perform a successful transfer on humans, and he said the biggest issue would then be ethical considerations, and he formed a panel to look into the ethical issues. He was concerned about psychological issues (black brain transplanted into white body: male brain transferred to a female body; one very distinct body type – very tall or large such as a basketball or football player – transplanted into a very different body type), and criminal abuse – transplanting a criminal’s brain into a non-criminal’s body and thereby erase all physical means of identifying the criminal.  He was also concerned about the issue of transplanting the brain of an elderly brilliant person into a young body to preserve the genius and the productivity of that genius (think Einstein brain into a young body when Einstein was still alive but very old).

Jim Dobbins