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 going to use the cadavers to see if we can engineer the impossible ourselves frankenstein's monster we're going to see what it takes to pull it off and just how realistic that actually is it's going to be a strange one let's build this [Music] first things first we are incredibly grateful to all those who choose to donate their bodies to science and the last thing we want to 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 want to 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 be 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 going to 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 all right let's get building but real quick i want to say thank you to the sponsor today's video trade coffee i don't know about you i'm a big coffee person but if i haven't had my cup of coffee in the morning i might as well be frankenstein's monster but with that said not all coffee is the same at least what's available to me in my local grocery stores most that coffee is dull bland and boring it's been sitting on those shelves for 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the flavors right on the bag this is bittersweet chocolate caramel plum pie and toasted walnut it's a dark roast and it's absolutely phenomenal once you've had a chance to enjoy the coffee that's where you jump back on trade's website and rate the coffee that way trade can better curate choices for your specific taste preferences trade has a first match guarantee meaning they guarantee you'll enjoy the first bag of coffee you get or if you don't they'll send you another bag completely for free the cool thing is though simply being a viewer of our channel means you're going to get your first bag of coffee for free anyways all you need to do is just click the link in the description below take their short quiz and soon enough you won't be feeling like frankenstein's monster either i want to 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 going to be in various states of decomposition you also have to consider whether or not embalming preservatives were used you're probably wondering 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 going to 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 two to four degrees celsius that would be your best bet still though you're gonna need to move very quickly post-mortem because while the decomposition process has been slowed it has not been stopped plus different body parts are going to require different optimal storage temperatures so you're going to 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 going to notice that the muscle tissue is completely frayed not everything's not even you're going to see connective tissue nerves blood vessels that are all going to be at slightly different levels you want to make sure that all of that is as clean as possible because when you attempt to reattach that limb you're going to 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 how 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 going 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 want to 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 going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 canovero 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 want to quickly orient you so you understand what you're looking at this is the cervical spine or the bones in the neck this is going 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 at 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 traveling 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 because you're going to 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 going to be fully functional and be able to live a reasonably long lifetime for the various mammals that scientists have performed head transplants on that just hasn't been the case they either die immediately or 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 and actually i should really quickly say that my favorite frankenstein movie is actually young frankenstein by mel brooks brilliant movie an abbey normal brain for those of you who know you know but if you just want to include a head that comes with a 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 want to 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 going to be coming off of the brain you're going to need to restore the meningeal system you see this right here this is the dura it actually wraps the outside of the brain you're going to have to restore that entire system you're going to 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 have successfully engineered the impossible beating astronomical odds well now you have a patient that's going to require a lot of aftercare they're going to 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 that's absolutely horrifying the bones are going to need to heal the 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 aloe transplantation 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 tags recognizing that hey you don't belong here so naturally they're going to start to fight against one another this is a significant problem to overcome and on top of that you're also going to 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 purview 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 want to 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 going to 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 want to 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 going to roam the earth indefinitely the world is plenty scary as it is without more monsters running around thanks everybody see ya [Music] you