Frankenstein's monster is one of the most iconic fictional characters ever created. We all know the
story - mad scientist assembles various body parts from various people into a singular creature,
brings that creature to life and then that creature proceeds to torment him and his family
endlessly. Well, in today's video, we're gonna use the cadavers to see
if we can engineer the impossible ourselves, Frankenstein's monster.
We're gonna see what it takes to pull it off and just how realistic
that actually is. It's gonna be a strange one. Let's build this.
First things first, we are incredibly grateful to all those who choose to
donate their bodies to science and the last thing we wanna do
is disrespect that gift by playing mix and match with body parts we have here in the lab
all for a YouTube video. If you ever see me touching body parts together in today's video,
I want you to know all those parts come from the same individual.
Our job today is to discuss the logistics of attaching body parts to one another
as well as the complications that can arise from doing so. To accomplish that,
I feel like we can respectfully illustrate that process with one cadaver at a time
and the message will still get across. So, I want you to understand very clearly
that I'm not going to literally be attempting to build Frankenstein's monster today.
Second thing I wanna briefly mention is that the story of Frankenstein has had well over
100 different adaptations in the 200 plus years since Mary Shelley first wrote the novel in 1818.
I think this version is actually from 1831, but she first wrote the novel in 1818.
In the original story, Mary Shelley really didn't even focus on the creation of the monster itself.
Instead, it was a story about the consequences of reanimating dead tissue.
The abandonment of the creature at its first moment of life.
It's about God's relationship with man and man's relationship with God. It's about
really defining what does it mean to be a monster. Instead, it was films and theatrical productions
that decided to focus on the creation of the monster itself
including details of the process such as lightning strikes and screaming, "It's alive!"
So, we need to quickly define what actually constitutes Frankenstein's monster. To me,
there needs to multiple body parts from multiple different people all assembled into
one singular creature. Now, how many body parts? I think that's up for debate but I
would argue bare minimum, you at least need to have all four limbs from separate donors
all attached to one torso that's yet again from a separate donor and then a head and
neck that are from yet another donor and then a brain from yet even another donor.
Now, you could break up the parts more than that, just be aware
that the more parts you had, say like if you had separate hands, separate fingers,
you're just gonna be dramatically increasing the complexity of what you're trying to pull
off. I would also say that all of these parts need to come from dead bodies.
The entire premise of Frankenstein is about the reanimation of dead tissue. So, in my mind,
you can't really allow for organ donation from living donors or limb donation from living donors.
Now, obviously, some organs if you take them, it's going to kill that individual but still there's
other ones, say like a kidney, that you could get away with. I don't think that's acceptable
because it doesn't really fall in line with just the story of Frankenstein, but as long as all
those parameters are met, I personally feel like we have ourselves a viable Frankenstein's monster.
Alright, let's get building. Real quick, I wanna say thank you to the sponsor today's video,
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I wanna say this right away, grave robbing is an absolute no go. Think about it, dead bodies
begin to decompose very quickly and unless all of these bodies that you're taking the parts from,
die at once, they're all gonna be in various states of decomposition.
You also have to consider whether or not embalming preservatives were used.
You probably about the sock... We put the socks on there actually to keep the tissue
hydrated so it's soaked in a hydrating fluid. It also helps block the toenails that a lot of
people just find to be uncomfortable. But the thing is, if embalming preservatives were used,
say for like a viewing for instance, well, this tissue is not gonna come back to life.
The chemicals will have absolutely destroyed any potential this tissue may have had.
Morgues, however, those might be a viable option. It depends on the morgue though because they can
use different temperatures for storing the bodies. If the temperature is at or below freezing, then,
that tissue can't be used at all. The cells would freeze,
burst, and all tissue continuity would be completely out the window.
However, if the temperature is above freezing but still very cool, say
somewhere around 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, that would be your best bet. Still though,
you're gonna need to move very quickly post mortem because the decomposition process has been slowed,
it has not been stopped. Plus, different body parts are gonna require
different optimal storage temperatures. So, you're gonna have to keep that in mind too.
The next thing you'll need to do is ensure that every cut that's made is as clean and precise as
possible. You're looking here at a cross section of the upper thigh and all things considered,
this is a very clean cut but if you look closely, you're gonna notice that the muscle
tissue is completely frayed. Not - everything's not even, you're gonna see connective tissue,
nerves, blood vessels that are all gonna be at slightly different levels.
You wanna make sure that all of that is as clean as possible because when you attempt to reattach
that limb, you're gonna have to stitch every single one of those structures together. This
is a big problem and in fact, in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Victor Frankenstein himself understood
this. He realized that small and delicate these structures are would slow the process
immensely. This is why he chose for the creature to be eight feet tall and built like a house.
He reasoned the bigger the body parts, the easier it would be to see the structures as he's
stitching them together. I mean, microsurgery didn't get invented until the 1960s. So,
while you're gonna have to suspend your disbelief on this quite a bit simply because there's so
many structures to stitch together with the naked eye, it's actually quite reasonable.
You're also to need a completely sterile operating room which is completely unlike what I have here
and plenty of people to help you out. In the book,
Victor Frankenstein did the entire procedure by himself.
Igor or Fritz as he was originally called was never in the book and instead showed up in the
theatrical productions and films. Still, you're gonna need much more help than just
one other person. You're gonna need a fully sterile operating room with a crew of surgeons
and medical staff probably numbering above 30. That's because this procedure is going to take
vast amounts of space, surgical equipment, saline, blood transfusions, and just simply time.
There's no way you could do everything that needs to be done in just a few hours.
This is going to take tens of hours. I'm talking 30, 40, 50 plus hours of round-the-clock work
just to get it done. Real quickly, I wanna go back to the point of sterilization because
you're not going to just need to sterilize the assembly process,
you're going to need to sterilize the donors and that process as well.
Think about this, you're going to be assembling
multiple parts from multiple different people - microbes are everywhere and the sheer amount of
infections that they can cause is out of control. I know that we said that the torso would be coming
from one individual and that's exactly what you're looking at here. This is the rib cage and then
this down here are the abdominal muscles but we really didn't specify about the organs inside.
In my mind, you would want the organs and tissues to be as healthy as possible. I mean,
think about it, why would you go through this entire process if you're gonna be using diseased
and dysfunctional organs and tissues? That's just much more likely to result in failure. Doesn't
make much sense. So, that means you're gonna need to find optimal lungs, an optimal heart,
liver, digestive tract, literally everything in here and then, you're gonna have to assemble that.
I mean, by the way, when I say optimal, I don't just mean healthy, it needs to fit,
they need to be proportional. The same is gonna be for the limbs. I mean, I imagine you wouldn't
want one limb to be longer or thicker or thinner than another one. Everything once needs to be as
proportional as possible and fit inside of this space. So, you have quite the task ahead of you to
find not only healthy tissue but size appropriate tissue that will fit inside of the torso.
The head and brain are going to be the most difficult task you have in front of you.
We've been transplanting organs and replanting limbs since the 1950s and 60s
yet we are still unable to perform a successful human head or brain transplant.
Many of you have probably heard of Sergio Canavero, the Italian neurosurgeon who's
been wanting to transplant a human head for years. The struggle that he
and his team have had revolves around this structure right here called the spinal cord.
So, I wanna quickly orient you so you understand what you're looking at.
This is the cervical spine or the bones in the neck. This is to be the tongue
this is the roof of the mouth so this is the anterior direction and then this would be
the posterior direction and the spinal cord is running inside of the vertebral column.
Now, this point you're no longer dealing with nerves, you are now dealing with the central
nervous system and this is vastly more complex. You have neurons travelling up and down this
structure and it's an incredible amount of neurons too. Creating a clean enough cut - let's see if I
can grab this right here - creating a clean enough cut on the spinal cord while also being able to
stitch such delicate and tiny structures together while also having to go quickly because the entire
head at this point isn't really connected cuz you're gonna actually be attaching or
performing the attachment down here in the neck, that is a big problem that is yet to be solved.
For me, if I'm going to be building a creature, I want to make sure that it's gonna be fully
functional and be able to live a reasonably long lifetime. For the various mammals that scientist
have performed head transplants on, that just hasn't been the case. They either die immediately,
are in a permanently vegetative state or they're just really dramatically limited
in their overall faculties and to me, that's just an unsuccessful transplant.
Now, remember, I believe that you need to include a separate brain for it to qualify
as being Frankenstein's monster. Some of you may disagree with that. I mean, in the book,
it doesn't really talk about getting another brain. That's more of a product of the movies.
Actually, I should really quickly say that my favorite Frankenstein movie is actually young
Frankenstein Mel Brooks. Brilliant movie, an Abby Normal Brain - for those of you who know,
you know - but if you just wanna include a head that comes with the brain in your
Frankenstein's monster, I'm not going to argue with that, it's far more simple but let's just
say that you do wanna include a separate brain in your Frankenstein's monster.
Not only are you going to have to work extremely quickly to pull this off,
the level of precision is obscene. You're going to need to connect all 12 of the cranial nerves
that are gonna be coming off of the brain, you're going to restore the meningeal system. You see
this right here? This is the Dura. It actually wraps the outside of the brain. You're gonna
have to restore that entire system. You're gonna have to connect all of the various blood vessels
to their appropriate spot and then on top of that, you're going to have to reattach the skull.
Again, mind you, this needs to happen extremely quickly. The brain is the most delicate and
sensitive organ in the human body. It will die and decompose very quickly. This is why
brain damage can occur within just a few minutes of experiencing a loss of blood and oxygen.
Let's say you pull it off. You've successfully engineered the impossible being in astronomical
odds. Well, now you have a patient that's gonna require a lot of after care.
They're gonna need to be placed in a medically-induced coma for at
least some amount of time to ensure that everything's working properly.
Can you imagine making them conscious only for them to start experiencing some
of the most horrific side effects and symptoms of any procedure known to man?
It's absolutely horrifying. The bones are gonna need to heal.
Various body parts will need to be closely monitored so they don't reject one another.
This is a common problem with what's known as allotransplantation
or the transplanting of organs, tissues, or cells from one person to another.
The body needs to be able to understand that something foreign is inside of it and I need
to attack it. In this case, you have multiple organs and limbs from various different people
all with their own cellular surface proteins or those name tag recognizing that hey,
you don't belong here. So, naturally, they're gonna start to fight against one another.
This is a significant problem to overcome.
Now, on top of that, you're also gonna have to ensure that blood types are compatible. Again,
another big problem. The simple truth is that while this is technically possible,
it might as well be practically impossible given the current state of medicine and technology.
Plus, it is so highly unethical, you would have to convince a whole bunch of other people to
do this with you outside of the preview of any governing body which is very unlikely to happen.
In the book Frankenstein, it's never actually revealed
how to reanimate dead tissue. That's because Victor Frankenstein as he's retelling the story,
he says, "I don't wanna tell you because I don't want you or anyone else to have the same problems
that I'm having" but what we do know is that whatever he did was grounded in both chemistry
and alchemy which means I wouldn't be holding my breath that this is gonna happen anytime soon.
Thanks for watching Everybody, I'd like to say thank you once again to the sponsor of
this video Trade Coffee. Be sure to click the link in the description below and there you can
get your own free bag of coffee. As always, be sure to like, comment, subscribe. Those
types of things really do help us and the video perform better in YouTube's magical algorithm
but I wanna leave you with this - be sure to not take this information that I've given you
and go off and develop nightmarish creatures that are gonna roam the earth indefinitely.
The world is plenty scary as it is without more monsters running around. Thanks everybody. See ya.