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Organ transplantation, where a damaged or failed organ is replaced with a working one,
is one of the greatest advances of modern medicine that saves countless lives. In 2021 alone,
over 40,000 organ transplantations were performed in the United States.
Currently, there are six life-saving organs that doctors are able to transplant:
the lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and intestine.,
Many other components of the body can be transplanted as well, including the uterus,;
arms, hands, and legs,; and a number of different tissues like skin, different parts of the eye,
and components of the musculoskeletal system. Imagine getting all these replaced. You’d be like
half you and half… all the other people! Oh boy! That’s giving me the heeby jeebies!
Are you still you? I'll save that question for the end!
But there are some organs that can’t be transplanted. Like the entire eye.
While small parts, like the cornea and sclera, can be transplanted,
a whole-eye transplant has never been done successfully.
This is because of the complexity of the optic nerve, which consists of over a million tiny
nerve fibers that would need to first stay alive after removal from the donor, then be reconnected
to the recipient, and finally, be able to rejuvenate and regrow from the eye to the brain.,
So far, scientists are unable to fully accomplish all of these steps,
though they are hard at work trying to find a way to do so, like by blocking
genes to prevent the death of nerve cells and finding drugs that make them regrow.
The brain has similar challenges. Scientists have yet to find a way to keep it alive after
removal and establish a connection of the spinal cord to the recipient’s.
Though, notably, one pair of surgeons have claimed that a whole-body transplantation–in
which the recipient’s head is attached to a donor body–is possible.,
And while their controversial plans to perform this operation on living humans fell
through in 2019, they claim to have already transplanted the heads of mice
and reconnected the spinal cords of a dog and a monkey. However,
their studies and claims have been highly criticized for lacking evidence.
But what if it did work and you could replace your entire body one day? Are you still you
if most of your body is someone else? At what point do you stop being you?
There’s a thought experiment called the ship of Theseus
that asks a similar question about ones’ changing identity:
If, over time, you replace every part of a ship, is it the same ship that existed before?
While you're having that existential crisis, let me know in the comment section below,
what should I talk about next? Ask me any weird question like this one in
the comments and make sure you use the hashtag #DearBlocko so I can find it!
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As always my name is block, this has been life noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!