Isn't it odd that parts of our body are held in more reverence than others? Why is the head so damn important? We do heart and liver transplants.... we even transplant eyes. Why shouldn't a functional body be transplanted on to a head? Obviously, we should perfect the process prior to attempting it in a practical way, but still, why do people have a problem with this? Is it because the body being "harvested" would have to have be only brain dead prior to transplant? Interesting stuff.
I think it has to do with how we recognize people. If I look at you and see your face, I'll recognize it next time I see it and assume that the body bearing that face, and that head is the same and that the entity within that body is the same as the one I interacted with the last time I saw the face. You could get a new internal organ and I would never know, you would appear the same.
I think the difference with transplanting a head is that ,as you need a live one to transplant, a person ends up dead. Like do we use vegetative state organ donors heads?
Yeah, we would need to use a vegetative state persons body and put a functional head on it from a quadriplegic, right? I suppose that would be a tough pill to swallow, but if a family was going to pull the plug anyways....
It's pretty crazy to think about what circumstances would make this borderline ethical. I don't know how my heart brain feels about it, but my science brain thinks it's awesome.