Brain transplant for future SRS?

Comment by Allison Elizabeth on October 24, 2012 at 10:57pm

I would do it in a HEARTBEAT!!!!!! However, I like a twilight zone episode I saw once better. In it Science had advanced to the point of being able to genetically modify any one and using your own DNA (with a couple of changes) alter your body to whatever specifications the customer desired. The episode revolved around a woman who became male but one of her close female friends reveals to her that she had undergone the procedure and used to be male. Ever since seeing that episode, I've been "looking for the signpost up ahead"!

Comment by Caroline Grace on October 25, 2012 at 6:19am

No doubt Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is amazing stuff. 4 (or arguably 5) chemicals that can be arranged in different sequences & amounts. Arranged one way and you get a frog; arranged another way and you get a blade of grass; arranged a third way and you get a human. 

And believe it or not, knowledge and behavior is transmitted from parent to offspring. DNA is believed to play a role in those transmissions. To prove that last statement, let's look a sea turtles. Somehow they know when to break out of their shells. Then they know to go up. How do they even know which way is up? Once out in the open they know to head toward the water. Then they know to go for a swim. Millions of turtles do this each year and not a single one of them had instructions, direct coaching from parents or others, or signs pointing the way.

In humans, a simple example of DNA affecting behavior that you can test: DNA is known to determine which way a person interlaces their fingers when folding their hands. Most people put their left fingers over the right ones. This is caused by a dominant gene. However, some people put their right fingers over their left (recessive gene, meaning both parents had to donate the gene to make this happen).  A more complex set of behaviors is our "fight or flight" reactions. Nobody taught us that directly but it is something we inherit from our parents.

So it is easy to believe that DNA is responsible for so many things. And it may come out one day that DNA plays a far greater role in those who are transgender than we know about right now. There are several possible reasons for people to be transgender. Some are: androgen insensitivity, wrong sex assigned at birth, chromosomes, SRY translocations, and fetal brain development. This is not a complete list.  Perhaps the most common is brain development.  For most people the brain develops in a way that that the person's gender identity matches their sex organs.  Take that same brain and that same genetic makeup and expose it to different hormones or chemicals and it will develop differently than the way it was originally planned for by the body's DNA. For most TG people, this is the likely thing that happened to us. So if we did a DNA check we'd appear typical. Of course, since there are multiple reasons why one could be TG, DNA is the culprit in a small number of cases.

No matter what the cause, scientists and medical folks believe that being transgender is based upon "a serious medical condition", whether that be fetal brain development as the root cause (as is the cause in most cases) or androgen insensitivity, or some other cause. We are created with a plan that comes from DNA, but that plan could be altered when parts are assembled (think about how some people put together IKEA furniture).  Since almost all of the reasons happen to us when we are babies who haven't ever seen sunlight yet, our parents play a far bigger role than most of us talk about.

And so I find the science of this moment amazing, And I agree, that with some visioning for the future there may be some terrific things done. But I would expect more money and research to be poured into other maladies: curing cancers, other development disabilities, heart disease etc. Ask any researcher about how research funds dry up when you say you want to do research on transgender folks. It is one of the reasons why there is so little established science available for us to know all of the causes, or to have anything more than a surface knowledge about the things we do know.

Comment by Jillian Munsell on October 25, 2012 at 8:16am

Hi Clair.. I love how you dream. Its those who see things the way you do, that make the biggest strides in our society. Not to get too far off subject, (which I love btw)... I wanted to let you know of another dreamer, an engineer who dreams of building a real - functional USS Enterprise. He has put a lot of thought into it and believes we could create a first generation Enterprise style spaceship to explore our Solar system - using technology, we have either already developed (or are close to having)  and do so in the next 25 years.

All you Trekkies may enjoy seeing his thoughts at www.buildtheenterprise.org

Comment by Julia Giannopoulos on October 25, 2012 at 12:42pm

I believe the near future will hold a decrease in medical ethics for the sake of population control.

Moving population numbers down to manageable levels allows countries to rein in costs associated with healthcare and advancement of the human condition for the better.

This will allow a greater number of the population at that point to take part in cutting edge science fiction like advancements in science and medicine.

Comment by Erin Detty on October 29, 2012 at 6:49am

From what I see out of a lot of people these days I don't see us giving ourselves that kind of compassion. The Health Care cost in this country is too expensive for 99% of us to afford without some kind of coverage. Every effort to help the average person to have access to affordable health care is fought over and blocked by the Republican Party with all their might.

There may even be a good guy bad guy thing going on between both parties that we are unaware of, anyway I don't see this happening for the average person. They don't want us to live that long anyway. I'm with Julia, Population Control will win out but I think it will remain too expensive for the average person to afford on their own. Nice thought though and I hope in the long run I'm wrong.       

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