LAUSR

Canavero andRen (2017) suggest that both public and bioethical objections to head/body transplantation will subside after patient outcomes prove successful in an analogous way to how similar objections to kidney and heart transplants have already subsided. Relatedly, Wolpe (2017) concludes that while there are reasons to oppose head/body transplantation now and in the near future, theremay come a timewhen such transplantation is ethically defensible. Both articles fail to consider three significant resource-based ethical objections to head/body transplants, and thus such procedures will be harder to defend than Ren and Canavero andWolpe contend. When combined, these three objections show that head/body transplants are ethicallywrong inmost cases. These objections are evident when one compares alternative uses of a donor body. I present these objections and then discuss the implications for head/body transplantation research funding. A suitable donor body has numerous transplantable solid organs, including a heart, two lungs, two kidneys, and a liver, as well as significant transplantable tissue including cornea, skin, and bone marrow. While current limitations make the successful transplants of each and every one of these organs and tissues from a single body unfeasible, a single donor body can still be used for multiple organ and tissue transplants to different recipients. In addition, by the time head/body transplants are feasible, the existing trend of significant progress in multiple organ and tissue transplants will have continued and thus multiple organ and tissue transplants are likely to be both more common and more successful (Guibert et al. 2011). Multiple organ and tissue transplants to different recipients will typically lead to greater overall health benefit than a single head/body transplant. After all, a single head/body transplant provides a health benefit to only one (or contentiously two) individuals: the head transplantee (and perhaps the body donor). Multiple organ and tissue transplants will typically benefit the health of numerous individuals, and given that organ failures are serious conditions, successful transplants of these kinds will typically lead to significant health benefits to those individuals. This will be true on a number of different measures of overall health benefit, including qualityadjusted life years (QALYs), life years, and numbers of lives benefited. For this reason, head/body transplants will be a substantively less effective way of promoting overall health compared to multiple organ and tissue transplants to different recipients. This discrepancy in overall health outcomes is also likely to increase with progress in multiple organ and tissue transplants, as more organs and tissues are able to be successfully transplanted. This large and increasing discrepancy is a strong ethical reason in favor of multiple organ and tissue transplants to different recipients over a single head/body transplant. Not only do multiple organ and tissue transplants to different recipients typically lead to overall greater health benefit, they will also typically lead to overall more egalitarian health outcomes than a single head/body transplant. A head/body transplant, if successful, will only benefit one needy individual at below average health. Multiple organ