two days before Christmas Day in 1954
the first organ transplant was achieved
when the kidney was transplanted from a
man called Ronald Herrick into his
identical twin Richard at a hospital in
Boston in 1963 the first human lung
transplant was performed at the
University of Mississippi the liver
transplant came next in 1967 also in the
US and that same year a heart was
transplanted at a hospital in Cape Town
South Africa we can now transplant other
organs such as pancreas intestine and
thymus with the kidneys liver and heart
being the most frequently transplanted
organs tissues can also be transplanted
and right now scientists are even
working on ways to 3d print human tissue
but there's one thing humans haven't
cracked and that's the organ that makes
us more us than any other today we'll
find out why in this episode of the
infographic show why can't we transplant
brains don't forget to subscribe and
click the bell bone so that you give me
part of a notification squad first of
all we should look at what the brain
actually does this thing inside our
skulls that weighs on average about
three point three pounds is larger in
humans than any other vertebrae when
compared to body weight that's why we
are so brainy the busy brain is our
command center for our nervous system
which takes in data from our body and
gives directions to our muscles in fact
it does so much work it requires about
20% of our energy to run it when we are
brain dead we no longer have any
neurological activity with the help of
machines we can be kept alive for a
short time but within a week the body
will not be able to function while we
may still be alive in some sense for
that week we are technically dead when
the brain is dead some good news is that
during the time we are kept alive some
of our other organs can be donated but
why can't we accept someone else's brain
when we transplant something such as a
heart surgeons use a mechanical pump to
keep blood flowing through the body
while the new heart is being put in the
new heart is then connected to the major
blood vessels and this might take
several hours he'll stay in the hospital
for one to two weeks and if your body
doesn't reject its new heart
it said 87 out of 100 people make it
through the year and 60 out of 100 get
through another decade so wouldn't it
just be possible to open the skull and
connect a new brain where the removed
brain was connected this question was
asked to a professor of Neurosurgery at
Yale
20:13 he actually did say that one day
this operation might be successful but
right now we are not even close the
reason is because it's just too darn
difficult to connect nerve fibers from
the new brain to the native spinal cord
this he said is why spinal cord injuries
can be so devastating if we could
transplant brains we would likely not
have so many people that are disabled
due to spinal injuries another professor
of Neurosurgery speaking in the same
article said that what might be more
feasible is a whole body transplant
which means a healthy brain being given
a new body which could be natural or
artificial we dug a little deeper and
found that indeed some fairly amazing
transplants have been done with brains
or heads in the 1950s russian scientist
vladimir demikhov created what has been
called Frankenstein's dog when he
transplanted the head of one dog onto
another giving it two heads later
American scientist Robert white
controversially transplanted the head of
monkeys from one to another but the
monkey was paralyzed as its spinal cord
had been severed and it died in a few
days basically you can transplant a
brain or a head but doing it
successfully is going to be a problem
she believes that we won't even go there
because it is just too gruesome and the
public won't like it everyone seems to
come to the same conclusion and that if
you sever the nerves in the central
nervous system the transplanted brain
could not be reconnected all the
neurosurgeons out there seem to agree
that we just do not have anything near
the technology to reattach the brains
veins and cranial nerves the spinal cord
and the four major arteries one
particular scientist paints a very bleak
picture wherein we successfully attached
a brain to the arteries and veins you'd
be thinking but according to him you'd
have a person in utter sensory isolation
and paralysis locked-in syndrome only
worse he believed a full head transplant
would be easier by the way you might
have read that an Italian neurosurgeon
called Sergio canavero performed a head
transplant recently but that transplant
wasn't on living people it was on
corpses
we are not Lego just sticking things
together doesn't mean they work with us
humans for the most part the great head
transplant story is now being received
as fake news so with billions of neurons
each with trillions of synapses in the
cerebral cortex
we can't really just expect to hook a
new brain up to another body but never
say never
while brain transplants might sound like
science fiction what might happen if we
did successfully managed to rewire a
brain in another body no one really
knows but there is a lot of speculation
out there it seems some people agree you
just be you in another body by that
you'd be the brain in another body and
the person whose brain was removed while
looking like the survivor would in fact
be the person who had gone the brain
rules another thing people talk about is
the fact that brains grow with bodies in
tune so if one brain was put in another
body things might not just run like
clockwork it could produce a kind of
trauma even if all the right bits were
connected and that could only happen if
the huge doses of immunosuppressants
could ensure the immune system doesn't
attack the new brain or head even if you
did do that one scientist said this year
that by putting a new chemical
environment with new neurological input
would just lead to a very mentally
messed up Frankenstein
we'd have no continuity and might end up
feeling like Mary Shelley's creation who
once asked was I then a monster a blot
upon the earth from which all men fled
and whom all men disowned in conclusion
we are not even close to brain
transplants or head transplants we are
not sure how they could be done
successfully and we are very afraid of
trying what do you think about the idea
let us know in the comments also be sure
to check out our other video called
worst prison experiments conducted on
humans thanks for watching and as always
don't forget to Like share and subscribe
see you next time