Re : we need to get rid of the big antenna.
My understanding of "the big antenna" is -- the end of the antenna has to clear one's head, in order to get an unobstructed "line of sight" up to a Globalstar satellite.
Another angle to solve this problem -- let's try to get rid of those unwieldy heads !
There was an article in the January 2000 issue of Wired about head transplants. (I am not making this up).
Here is the article :
wired.com
GO TO : 2084. HEAD TRANSPLANTS
A Little off the Top
By Jonathan Vankin
Since the first human heart transplant in
1967, organ transplants have become only
slightly more noteworthy than root canals.
But what if your spouse, your child, or you
came home from the hospital one day with
not just a new heart or kidney - but a
whole new body from the neck down?
It's theoretically possible: By late in the
century the human head transplant might
be as common as a kidney transplant is
now. In fact, the technology exists today
for transplanting a head onto a new body,
but there's a catch: The body would be
paralyzed. Still, some people could benefit.
The brains of quadriplegic patients work
fine, but their overall health deteriorates
much faster than normal. Their lives could be prolonged significantly
with a change of scenery below the chin. Someone with inoperable
cancer, a degenerative heart condition, or any terminal ailment that
doesn't damage the brain could live longer by throwing out the old
body and stitching on a new one.
Many financial and ethical obstacles loom, but the leading booster of
head transplantation is convinced it's all going to happen. "I think
that sometime in the next 10 or 20 years it'll be done," says Robert
White, a Case Western Reserve University neurosurgeon who
performed head transplants on monkeys in a series of controversial
experiments three decades ago. (The surgery worked, but the
monkeys didn't live long.) After lying low, thanks in part to hostile
publicity from animal-rights activists, White has reemerged as the
leading advocate of head transplants. He wrote about the subject
recently in Scientific American and was profiled in London's Sunday
Times, in an article that made the doctor sound like he was itching
to perform the cabeza shuffle for someone like Christopher Reeve.
White says that was media hype. But he is ready to operate on a
qualified candidate, if someone will put up the money. He estimates
that a head transplant would cost about $2 million; all he needs are
the funds and a patient willing to end up, as he delicately puts it,
"as a head on a pillow."
White says he knows of a number of wealthy quadriplegics who
have "offered their support," but none of the would-be subjects
possesses a body decrepit enough to need replacing. In any event,
he says, the first head transplant will most likely be performed on a
terminally ill subject who will be happy to stay alive, paralyzed or
not.
"There are people who would be reassured by the fact that they
could see movies, they could see their family, they could hear
beautiful music, they could smell," White says. "And they could
communicate. Maybe that's enough."
Enough for now. Fast-forward 85 years, and surgeons will be
considering a broad range of head-transplant scenarios: Medical
technology may then allow complete reattachment of a severed
spinal cord.
Repairing, or even regrowing, the detached spinal cord is a major
challenge for neuromedical research. Injured nerves in the central
nervous system - the spinal cord and brain - never heal on their
own, but one of neurology's great puzzles is that, despite this fact,
nerves in the extremities do. Neurosurgeons hope to figure out why
peripheral nerves grow back, and to use that knowledge to trigger
spinal-nerve regrowth. In recent years, doctors have had some luck
transplanting fetal nerve tissue into the spinal cords of quadriplegic
cats, enabling many to walk again. In May 1999, researchers at
Massachusetts General Hospital announced they had successfully
regrown severed spinal nerves in rats.
The larger question is whether we should try any of this at home.
One person who doubts head transplants are likely or desirable is
Chet Fleming (not his real name), a practicing patent attorney who
once obtained a head-transplant-related patent (since declared
invalid) that he hoped to use to slow down research in this area.
(You can read all about it in his 1987 book, If We Can Keep a Severed
Head Alive ....) Fleming believes there is only a 5 to 10 percent
chance of nonparalyzing head transplants coming to pass by 2085.
The reason: Even if attaching a head to a new body is possible,
getting that new body to work will be fiendishly difficult. The nerve
pathways controlling every limb, every digit, every moving part will
have to be located and connected to the new body's spinal cord. No
one knows if that's doable.
"Regaining firsthand, effective control of the body in a nonspastic,
nonparalyzed way is a great, giant chasm at this point," says
Fleming. "It's possible that certain nerves that control the heart and
digestive functions could be made to work. But we're standing at
the edge of a Grand Canyon, and I don't think we can cross it."
Another problem is the politics of even attempting such a procedure.
"One of the advantages - sometimes disadvantages - of research is
that you have to get approval," White says. "You have to find a
major hospital willing to incur the invasion of the press and a good
deal of criticism."
White worries that doctors in the former Soviet Union will go ahead
with a head transplant under less-than-optimal conditions, which
could queer the procedure's entire future. He says he knows of
medical interest in such an operation in Ukraine. (He belongs to the
Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences and its Russian counterpart,
and travels to the two countries often.) Officials there, White says,
have frequently tried to lure him away to carry out the deed.
"The Russians have been trying, but fortunately they have no
money," says White. "I can't tell you how many offers I've gotten,
from Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. They all want me." (White also
belongs to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences - but no, he hasn't
discussed head transplants with the Pope.)
A Little off the Top (continued)
Fleming, on the other hand, worries that
the operation will take place here in the
US without proper governmental
oversight. Any hospital that receives
government funds - that is, almost every
major hospital in the country - has a
complex approval-and-oversight process
for untried surgical procedures, but private
clinics are often more footloose.
"At a private clinic you can do pretty much
whatever you want," Fleming says. All it
would need is a volunteer and a medical
team led by a thrill-seeking neurosurgeon.
White's proposed procedure is, not
surprisingly, elaborate and macabre. It
requires an operating room twice the
normal width, because a head transplant
is really two operations in one. It's not like
a heart or liver transplant: You can't pack
a head in an ice-filled picnic cooler and
load it on a helicopter. Once the head is severed, the clock starts
ticking - fast - so the donor and recipient have to be right there on
their own slabs. Doctors must be both nimble and meticulous,
cutting off the donor's and patient's heads at the same time.
Once that's done, surgeons have an hour to complete the
painstaking process of fastening the patient's dome to its new
home. An hour is a long time for a severed head to live. The only
reason it's possible is that White has developed a technique for
cooling the brain, putting it in something like suspended animation.
At 50 degrees Fahrenheit the brain's metabolism slows enough to
let it survive well beyond the few minutes that a warm brain takes
to expire once removed from its body.
"I've even named it the White Operation, to get a little credit for it,"
says White. But at this point, he can't do much more than wait. "I
looked in the mail today," he says, "and I didn't see a check for $2
million."
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