eli5 : Why are there organs and limbs transplant but no brain and entire eye transplant?
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You can’t just transplant a brain. You have to transplant most of the Central Nervous system. This includes the eyes, ears, spinal cord, certain facial nerves, major tributary spinal nerves, possibly the vagus nerve system. While you’re excising all that, you can’t interrupt the blood supply to any part for more than 4 minutes, or it dies. Humans don’t have the ability to regrow CNS parts in a functional way once they’re seriously damaged. (Moderate damage can be rerouted, sometimes to bypass damaged pathways.)
Assuming that you just transplanted the brain itself without the rest of the CBS, and assuming you could quickly and accurately reconnect the major arteries and veins in around 3 minutes flat, then what? What you have an unpleasant case of profound “locked-in syndrome.” This is a disturbing scenario where a person may be awake and conscious, but has absolutely no sensory input from the outside world nor external output. Just a case of full-body phantom limb syndrome which isn’t a good experience when if it’s just an arm or leg that you’re missing.
So, doing so would be unethical.
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