Now I'm curious... What WOULD be the characteristics for a body donor? Would it be similar to organ donors? Because I mean - they obviously can't take the body of someone who died of old age because that body is no longer reliable. Neither somebody ill, because the illness could also kill the head. Neither somebody completely healthy because that would be unethical.

And that raises even more question. Ethically - are we going to allow "critically suicidal" but otherwise completely healthy people to donate their bodies?

What about body... head... What would reject what, and what would be the consequences, and how the hell can we calculate the compatibility between two sets of systems - circulatory, lymphatic, nervous.... And let's just hope that most diseases (like the one this patient has) can't spread to a healthy body just like that.

It's truly an exciting moment in medicine I can tell. At least I'm positively excited.

And the ramifications - with lab organ growth being in the works, I can foresee in a few decades (if this test is successful) people getting full bodies grown, minus head (then again it MIGHT need at least a basic head to survive and grow properly - more ethics...) in case of accident.

And now I'm wondering what effect will this have on the elderly population - how long we could preserve a head for...

Hell - I just realized. While the ethics of it would be... dubious, if this succeeds we could, in theory, start trying brain transplants - have a full grown body with an older brain for "another lifetime". Then again - I don't know how long a brain can actually live for...

As a side note - I am ALSO wondering how much of this research would be useful in "transhumanist" work - how much of it could be adapted to make electromechanical bodies compatible with our nervous system. Brain-in-a-jar-in-a-mech, anyone?

TL;DR: THE HYPE IS REAL. I can see SO MANY implications for this. This is as big, if not bigger, than generalized AI in terms of ethics and possibilities.