Does this sound like something from a science-fiction story? Well, actually, it is! However, this elaborate hoax has received millions of views, most people including some so-named media sources are convinced it’s for real.

According to MIT Technology Review, the company BrainBridge does not exist. Its slickly constructed website was made up by a science and technology-based Yemeni film maker Hashem Al-Ghaili.

In the interview with MIT Technology Review, Hashem Al-Ghaili insists that he didn’t do it for clickbait. He claims it’s about “…pushing boundaries and testing feasibility.”  In other words, with the assistance of the project’s part-funder, biophysics/biotechnologist, Alex Zhavoronkov, a prominent figurehead in anti-ageing research, it was done to see what the response would be.

A screenshot on the BrainBridge website illustrating a patient receiving head transplant technology is modelled on Zhavoronkov’s head!

While met with much negativity from a generally disturbed public, calling it horrible, unholy, disgusting, ludicrous, not needed… Zhavoronkov claims that “some important and famous people are supporting [it] financially.”

The idea of avoiding fatal illness, such as, for examples, advanced cancer or heart-disease, or a neurogenerative disorder like motor neuron disease, by placing the head on a new healthy body sounds to many, including the cadres of anti-aging technologists over the years, a good solution to anti-aging. However, the related hypothesised surgical processes and applications continue to fail.

Al-Ghaili will carry on monitoring the financial and technical interests to see if the BrainBridge idea has feasibility. For more on this go here.

Moral, ethical and philosophical Implications. What it means to be human… Transhumanism and the matrix

Many have considered these death-defeating attempts through head transplant surgery to be nothing more than an immoral Frankenstein-like abomination in the making. Then there are those who have written it off as an impossible task:

Some might say, for example, that consciousness isn’t confined to the brain (antenna receiver), it’s within and outside of the body, as put forward by biologist Rupert Sheldrake.

It has been said that consciousness extends even further, defining who we are as spiritual beings and our connection to God (ALL-THERE-IS). -Transhumanist technophiles in their low-level awareness, rooted in the matrix illusion, may not realise these major snags in their limited self-centred conscious viewpoint…

A similar variation on a theme of this trying to reach immortality through transhumanism, exists in cryogenics,where a number of rich people have been cryogenically frozen and hope to be brought round one day when the related technology has been realized…

What if it worked?

Given that we are the imagination of ourselves, who can say for sure that this robotics/A. I technology will never work? Purely for argument’s sake, let’s say it will. Consider the following hypothetical implications and questions:

*After successful head transplant surgery, who are you? What defines you as a consciousness when you’re brought round and alive in a different body?

*Evidence has shown that a number of recipients have inherited certain characteristics from their organ donors. What about these characteristics; memories and abilities that you could inherit from your donor body?

*On a biological level, remember your genetic makeup from the neck-up is different to the rest of your body. How does this play out??

*This technology could give the okay to living a lifetime of unhealthiness knowing that the dying grossly unhealthy body can be replaced.

*Will this be another case of transhumanism where only the wealthy will be able to afford it; the so-called high price of immortality?

*Having said that, aren’t we all immortal beings anyway, so who really needs the technology…?

*Are the ones the most interested in trying to become immortal made up of elite billionaires greatly fearing death because of the atrocities they have committed against humanity?

*There are indeed ethical considerations such as how will the donor body be obtained? Could those with money and leverage for example, have an involvement with human trafficking while trying to find the right body donor for them?  

Will the following equation sum it up?

Heads transplanted from the rich = Body spares from the plebs

*In relation to the above consider the increase this would produce in missing persons.

*Could head replacement technology already be in existence, but has been kept under wraps in some hidden deep underground military base? Where only now this technology is deliberately finding its way into the public eye, so that we get used to it (predictive programming)?

-There are a number of other dangers associated with transhumanism.

In conclusion 

While this may not be all-to-easy to forget simply because of its creepy eerie nature, the purpose of this article was not merely to expose the BrainBridge website as a fancy science-fiction artwork hoax, but to point out that it may happen someday. Consider the implications.

Artificial Intelligence, robotics, nootropics, drug development, neuroscience… etc., continues to make significant advances in transhumanism. For example, Neuralink has just received FDA approval to go ahead and implant a second patient…

This presents new questions on what it means to be human while having philosophical, moral and ethical issues/concerns.