Liver Let Live

There was a story in the paper (hmmm, what will newspapers be called when there are no paper newspapers to be had?) the other day about a son who had donated his liver to his father. Then the son's liver grew back, and they both are healthy and happy.

I was thinking about this story as I drove to my new job at Current Publishing, which puts out six weekly papers -- and they still ARE papers -- in southern Maine. One thought led to another, meandering around stem-cell organ growth and hip replacements and cosmetic surgery and cloning, until they crystallized into the realization that eventually, if the human race doesn't wipe itself out, brain transplants are actually going to happen.

Why not? It will be as simple as, say, putting a new engine in your car. Just place brain in sawed-off skull, match up the dangling vesicles to their proper counterparts (optic nerve, brain stem, spinal cord), tighten up a few clamps and away we go!

Where will the bodies come from, you ask? Well, of course, cloning will advance to the point where it can be selective, so you can clone bodies that have no brains. Picking a new body will be like walking into Target and buying a dress off the rack. The only size you have to worry about is brain-pan size. You could even clone your own body when you're young and lithe, put it on ice, and get back into it when you feel your losing your looks.

Taken to an extreme, this could mean a lot of people choose a clone of the same person to "re-brain" in, so the people you meet on the street could look exactly like you. Bizarre! You could be in an orchestra where everyone looks exactly the same, but you all have different brains and different personalities.

It would certainly solve the dilemma of people who feel they're a different sex beneath their bodily trappings. Just put your brain into a clone of the opposite sex! No hormone treatments, no operations (except the brain transplant), no new "women" still looking like the men they once were!

I'm not trying to be funny here. I can see this is really going to happen, given enough time. You should trust me on this, too. I blogged before computers were invented. I drove beaters all my life, before used cars became fashionable. I'm a visionary. I am the great and powerful Debbi Hardy. Don't forget it.