Using the old noggin

So you say you're 5'7", and have always dreamed of being 6'3"?  Or you're 75, still sharp as a tack, and would like a 25-year-old body to match your youthful brilliance?  Or maybe you're unhappy with your gender, and would like an instant  change to the body of the opposite sex, a change that fulfills your self-image?

Well, do we have a solution for you!  The kind of thing you may have joked around about as a kid, but never dreamed would be available!  But it's here.  Or soon will be.

I speak, of course, of head transplants.

Fox News takes a breather from denouncing Obamacare and illegal immigrants, and reports on the ultimate in plastic surgery.  Citing a neurosurgical medical journal,¹ Fox states that head transplants now seem technically feasible.  Or soon will be.  Two (presumably) willing candidates need only show up in the operating room at the same time, eagerly awaiting the Big Switcheroo.

In order for the process to work, both the donor and recipient must be in the same operating room, and the donated head must be cooled to between 54.6 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, surgeons must rapidly remove both heads at the exact same time, reconnecting the new head to the recipient’s body and circulatory system within one hour.

What could possibly go wrong?

The problem until now has been that both survivors (I'm assuming two survivors, but more realistically one donor would be performing his final good deed) would be paralyzed from the neck down.  But now, by use of an "extremely thin knife," neurosurgeons can achieve a "clean cut" that permits the body's natural healing process to achieve a proper fusion of all the axons contained within the spinal cord.

Don't show up at your local O.R. just yet.  Doctors probably will want to try this out on monkeys first.  And there's always the problem of finding a 6'3" 25-year-old who's always had a hankering to be transformed within hours into a a 5'7" 75-year-old.  But once a sufficient amount of money changes hands, this obstacle probably can be overcome.

Still, as the article concludes, "the ethics surrounding this type of surgery are hotly debated."  Again, however, if you have enough money, this ethical debate will soon enough seem somewhat academic, if not hopelessly naïve.
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¹Surgical Neurology International