Is this medical procedure plausible?

[Mirannan]

For another fictional treatment of this, see Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil".

 

[tinkerdan]

A lot might depend on the definition of brain death and whether it involves the brain stem and if you need to have the entire brain and stem intact to achieve the desired result.

With cryogenics the crystals formed are not as damaging as normal freezing so that might not be a problem and in the future the process may become more effective to reduce the water crystallization.

I'm not sure cryogenics would be necessary though or even desirable unless there was a backlog of procedures.

It might be more likely they--the doctors and emergency medics--would have a suspension substance to place the brain and stem in to keep it properly stimulated and functioning. Having such would be just as likely as having the ability to insert the brain into anything else.

This way the medics show up and put the body on life support if possible and do the rest either in the mobile surgery or at a facility without having to do the dramatic head lopping in public. I suspect though that its this shock factor is what you're looking for rather than the whole science of the rest since the concern is over the possible moral and social aspect of beheading the patients in front of other people.

So the best notion would be to have a helmet like iron mask type of cryonic construct and you could put the equivalent of a cigar cutter on the neck portion to act as a quick one motion guillotine like decapitator. That way the person-hood of the victim would be disguised as 'the man in the iron mask' and that anonymity would desensitize public opinion.

Also remember if you don't want to be brought back always destroy the brain stem.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

Take the body down to four degrees Centigrade to slow biological processes (including cell death) without worrying about ice crystals. Do this quickly by cutting into a major artery and pumping in a refrigerant (or just cool the blood and recirculate it). Get the body to the hospital. Use nanites to repair any damage before transplantation. No need to public decapitation, and you can include the spinal cord.