I can't help but wonder somedays...

October 9, 2005 5:09 PM

How much of a person's body could be surgically amputated while making sure the person remains alive?
posted by adampsyche to Health & Fitness (24 answers total)

Response by poster: In the Johnny Got his Gun sense. Ya know, for science.
posted by adampsyche at 5:11 PM on October 9, 2005

There is such a thing as a hemicorpectomy. That's all I know.
posted by jennyjenny at 5:18 PM on October 9, 2005

This makes me immediately think of that Steven King story Survivor Type. Since IANAD I won't even begin to speculate but jennyjenny's answer means the answer is definitely "over 50%"
posted by jessamyn at 5:26 PM on October 9, 2005

Am I the only person that finds this question ever so slightly disturbing?

Alive as in, not brain-dead? Surely then everything could be, er, removed except the brain and the heart (and their surrounding "bits"). I don't know anything about this, I'm just speculating.

Gross.
posted by Lotto at 5:33 PM on October 9, 2005

All surgery involves risk so the answer is zero percent, because you can never make sure the patient remains alive.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:34 PM on October 9, 2005

I'm going to google jenny's term. I expect I shall regret doing so.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:36 PM on October 9, 2005

Response by poster: Sure, they all assume risk, but we're talking about, ya know, reasonable doubt. I have a reasonable doubt that you'd die from having a pinky amputated.

I'm thinking conscious, if possible, if not opiated.
posted by adampsyche at 5:36 PM on October 9, 2005

Ah, heck, that wasn't so bad. Turns out it's been used only a few times. Most of the references are to a man who had his legs and hips lopped off due to cancer (and then he went and died of brain cancer a few months later, ingrate!), and a young girl who was basically cut in two by her lap seatbelt. No terribly gory pictures and no weird sex stuff in the list, thank goodness.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:41 PM on October 9, 2005

Start with the hemicorpectomy, and after that I'm sure the ears, nose, lips, top of the skull and arms could be removed, but it depends on your definition of amputation. Plenty could be done internally too...the stomach is an extravagance and I'm sure we can survive on a fraction of a kidney..
posted by fire&wings at 5:44 PM on October 9, 2005

Well, you could remove all appendages, arms, legs, and even the nose, ears. I suppose you could remove the jaw and tongue, if they were fed through a tube. Don't need eyes. There are people who have only one of the two halves of their brain. Appendix, spleen. If their food intake is high enough and perhaps if they received intravenous supplements, you could lose some of the stomach and intestines. John Wayne lived on half a lung for a while. Only need one kidney. On a woman you could lose the breast tissue. Assume that all reproductive organs are removed.

So, if you had no quality of live whatsoever, you could probably lose about 65% or more of you body by weight, I would guess.

Now I hate you for making me think of all that.
posted by qwip at 5:44 PM on October 9, 2005

There was a SomethingAwful thread about this a while back. It eventually found it's way to an EXTREMELY CREEPY black and white video of Russian animal experiments from back in the day, including footage of a dog's head barking, breathing, responding to stimulus, all while attached to machines instead of a doggy-body. I still have the horrible horrible video saved somewhere, but I don't have a link for it-I imagine you could google it as well as I could, but I don't recomment it. So, if you knew what you were doing, at least the entire body, and then things like tongue, eyes, ears, etc.
posted by Juliet Banana at 6:46 PM on October 9, 2005

The brain has "immunological privilege," or rather is the only body part which won't be rejected by a host body in transplant. Though [to my knowledge] we haven't figured out how to transplant brains from one head to another in the traditional sense, Cincinnatti neurosurgeon Robert White has been able to keep isolated monkey brains alive on other monkeys' circulatory systems (an eerie concept reminiscent of a Roahd Dahl story), effectively reducing the brain to a life of memory because it has no sensory organs to register its dire situation with.. The brains were "stored" in host-monkey abdomens & necks...

In the meanwhile, since the 1960s when White started at this, immunosuppressant drugs have been developed, & White apparently hopes to eventually do human head transplants. Ideally these would benefit quadripelegics, whose natural lifespan is reduced due to the strain it puts on the body, & whose "quality of life" wouldn't be that greatly altered, apparently (since spinal nerves can't yet be reconnected, the old-head on new-body would still be paralyzed from the neck up).
posted by soviet sleepover at 6:51 PM on October 9, 2005

I'm guessing with today's technology, you could amputate the entire body, leaving just the head.

Ultimately, you could disconnect both halves of the brain, which would then be able to 'live' independantly. They would be 'concious' but have no input or output.

How much money do you have to spend on this project adampsyche? (just kidding) I think will a few million dollars in funding, you could acomplish such a thing.

You could also go on and remove certan parts of the brain. They would no longer need a motor cortext, for example.

Yuck.
posted by delmoi at 6:55 PM on October 9, 2005

Also: Russians did all kinds of that stuff (not that the French with their surplus of guillotined heads weren't guilty of early experiments, mostly trying to get at the residence of the soul which was speculated to hang out in the head, owing to the fact that the head is capable of recognizing its lousy circumstances for several seconds after decapitation, though not articulating them thanks to no voice box or esophagus to provide air). There were all kinds of puppy-forelimbs-and-lungs transplanted onto other halves of puppies in the 1950s. Russians also proved that blood from recently-dead corpses was perfectly safe (much in the same way that organ donation is), and the only thing that prevents us doing it today is social taboo. (I think Dr. Kevorkian was also involved in blood swapping in his early days, though I'm not sure to what ends, but I do remember it turned out alright.)

Anyhow, this stuff is great, isn't it?
posted by soviet sleepover at 6:56 PM on October 9, 2005

Delmoi: I know this hasn't happened yet, & so far the immunosuppressants aren't totally perfected in monkey head-transplants (hmm...), but apparently there is an extremely rich quadripelegic in Cincinnatti who's volunteered for a head-transplant when he's on his last legs, so to speak.
posted by soviet sleepover at 6:58 PM on October 9, 2005

Wikipedia discusses the hemicorporectomy, which is amputation at the waist, including the pelvis and pelvic girdle.
posted by mendel at 7:13 PM on October 9, 2005

Your question reminded me of the origins of the term "basket case": during WWI it was the term used for soldiers with all their limbs amputated (surgically or otherwise), who were thereafter transportable in...baskets.

No wonder the term now means, "someone who has driven insane."
posted by availablelight at 7:29 PM on October 9, 2005

A fictional answer is found in Geek Love. From the Wikipedia article:

"Arturism involves members having their limbs amputated so that they can end up just like Arty. Each member moves up in stages, based on how much money they contribute to the cult."
posted by hendrixson at 7:48 PM on October 9, 2005

There was an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune a couple of years ago about some sort of special support device that had been built for a local man who had lost most of his lower body in a car accident. The article said that people in that condition often don't do well due to the lack of lower body support.
posted by gimonca at 8:09 PM on October 9, 2005

These massive amputations are very hard on the cardiovascular system, even when electively performed, because they change the circulating blood volume so drastically. Even folks who lose just one leg to trauma often don't make it out of the operating room. It's not blood loss per se that's the problem; it's something about the inability of the system to adapt to such sudden shifts in its dynamics.

Point being, adampsyche, schedule the OR for 12 small procedures instead of one big one.
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:01 AM on October 10, 2005

Anyone remember Boxing Helena?
posted by londonmark at 3:56 AM on October 10, 2005

You should have watched Lon Chaney's The Unknown on TCM last night. He forces a doctor to remove his arms in a bid to seduce a young Joan Crawford. (It's complicated!)
posted by hyperizer at 12:35 PM on October 10, 2005

Boxing Helena is what first came to my mind also londonmark
posted by Relly70 at 1:55 PM on October 10, 2005

"The Tomorrow File" by Lawrence Sanders deals with a scientist/bureaucrat whose work involves keeping just a subject's head alive and lucid (long-term). Interesting book.
posted by jsteward at 12:44 AM on October 29, 2005