ficult organs (in the body itself) to replace are the pancreas, liver, lungs, and kidneys. These perform specialised functions, and currently, artificial versions are not small enough to implant.
I expect to hear within a year or two of the first completely artificial kidney implant. There already is an implantable artificial kidney available, but it’s a lot larger than a natural kidney.
In the future, I expect that the only organ that you will not be able to replace, will be the brain itself. Not because it can’t be moved, of course, but because the brain is your identity – there is no point replacing your brain with someone else’s.
However, having said that, if your entire body was failing, you could transplant your brain into a younger body.
There are a number of reasons you should not hope for this to happen, though.
For one example, in order for you to do a brain transplant, there must be a younger body available for you to transplant into. But if a younger body is available and it is healthy, then it makes greater ethical logic to offer its organs to save multiple people, instead of just you.
For you to get a whole new body all to yourself, you would need to provide it yourself, and i can’t think of any legal or even close to ethical way that you could do this!
If it turns out you need a whole new body, you’re probably better off looking into brain uploads instead, which will be discussed later in the book. Currently, brain uploading is not possible, but the technology should be ready soon; probably sooner than the first successful brain transplant.
In this chapter, you learned a short history of organ transplants.
There is currently a shortfall of available donor organs.
Artificial replacements are available for some organs, and others are on the way.
The only organ that will never be replaced fully is the brain, but we’ll talk more about that in a later chapter.