Wind Beneath My Surgical Wings, Part 1

So enough preamble, hope that you enjoyed. Julie, who is not dream of either having wings themselves or just dreams of winged humanoids flying about? I mean, it's the stuff of just ancient myth, the stuff of fantasy, the stuff of religion, the stuff of of art. It's there's something just irresistible about the idea of a human with the wings of a bird, or even the wings of a bat. Yeah.

The desire to fly, I think is pretty universal. Even Dorothy from Oz right somewhere of the rainbow, bluebirds fly, birds fly over the rainbow? Why then, oh, why can't I go to singing the rest? Okay? But yeah, one example that always comes to my mind. I mean there are a lot of aiconic ones. Obviously, the myth of Acarus and dayalists big the idea that you know, they built these wings and then they fly too close to

the sun and then they plummet. It's just a fantastic metaphor for so much in human endeavor, human technology, um, humans reaching to achieve things that they were not necessarily biologically gifted with, but via their intelligence, are in a sense genetically gifted with. I also think back to a book called Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, British

author who famously wrote I Claudius Um. It's probably what he's most known for, but this was his biography and he was talking about his um, his service in World War One. There's a bit about mountain climbing in that as well, because he was one of these just really adventurous dudes. He'd go out with his his pals and they would scale these these towering cliffs. And there was one point where he's talking about, you know, clinging to

the side of this this rock face. Uh, you know, pretty to someone like me who is not a mountain climber and will never mountain climb terrifying idea, just to imagine myself clinging to the side of a mountain face. But he was unfazed by it. He was an adventurous dude, had bravery in just a natural inclination for this kind

of thing. But one time he said, they're scaling, They're they're a little tired clinging to the side, and a bird like sort of float flies by, but given the altitude and the wind kind of floats out there to the side, and and he mentioned he was just so unnerving the idea that it was like the bird was was coaxing him into letting go, as if there was another way, as if he could fly, which which also gets into these weird impulses we sometimes have of almost

like off destructive impulses. The the idea that, oh, if I get too close to the edge of the building, I might jump off. I was to say, because I have that. So even if I'm say, like a fairly like simple structure like a mall on the second floor, I don't want to go to the edge because I

feel as if I'm going to plunge off. So it's kind of interesting that there's this idea of him, you know, clinging to the side and this bird sort of mocking him to the limits of his own morphology, right, like, hey, dude, you're never gonna have wings. You might think you're this cool that you can, you know, rock climb up here, but you know, let me just buzz around you and

remind you of this. Yeah. It's like, in a sense, we see the birds flying and we we ended it, and we feel to a certain extent like it's our birthright because vast empty air, vast heights are terrifying, because we know that that's a limitation to us. We know that those are those are heights that we cannot really ascend to. Yes, we you know, we we have airplanes

at our disposal. We have various, uh methods of flight and gliding and skydiving and every think, but they're all kind of cheap imitations of the natural biological gifts of a bird. That's right, We're greedy. We want it for ourselves. It's not enough that we have created flight in the form of jets and planes and uh, you know, various other modes of transportation. So the question and the question for this podcast is is it would it be possible?

Is it really possible that we could somehow create wings for ourselves? Um? And I'm not talking just like strapping on wings, because there are wingsuits which are phenomenal. There's an article on them on how stuff works dot com that I wrote, how wingsuits work, and it's phenomenal technology and the people who use them are insane and also highly skilled. Um. But yeah, could we actually have biological wings that are a part of us, that are an

extension of us? Right? Could we gain our bodies in our minds in order to actually have this be a part of our own morphology? And why not? Right? Because we've talked about this, this is this is not so crazy, uman, it's absolutely out there. But there are so many different ways that we have augmented our reality in our physicality that uh, no doubt one day this could be a possibility. Yeah, I mean you'd, like you said, there's so many things we do to our bodies. Anyway, we went into this,

We've got into this a number of times. We talked about posthumanism quite a bit, and and cybernetics. We did an episode called the Werewolf Principle um, which probably wasn't the best title in the world because it doesn't have anything to do with werewolves. It's about that has to do with a sci fi story I was reading at the time, but the idea that we change our but potentially we change our bodies in order to explore space

and to explore the world. Instead of attempting to bring a portion of our atmosphere in our environment with us, uh and and and our limitations with us, we instead alter ourselves. And certainly we make a lot of augmentations to ourselves anyway, so many things such as glasses, contacts, various biomedical equipment is added to the human body. We're making these changes anyway, for things that are generally thought of it is necessary. Um. And then we also make

changes that are cosmetic in nature. But what about wings? Well, yeah, And in order to actually really get to the meat of this conversation, we have to bring up Dr Joseph Rosen. He is a Dartmouth plastic surgeon and reconstructive surgeon. And it's um, I think would be pretty mild just to say that he's a futurist. Yeah, And he's a definitely a futurist, definitely a post humanist and a he's he's one of these amazing individuals that if you look him up.

You'll find various articles about his work UM, but in particular, there was a two thousand and one UM interview slash profile in Harper's Magazine by Lawrence Slater. Highly recommend anyone read who's fascinated by this topic. It was called Dr Dadalus. It's an excellent article. Actually, the way that it was written reminded me of Mary Rich in the way that she approaches her material, So it is well worth checking out. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break, stay tuned for more

so with Rosen here's the thing he is. He's totally steeped in his profession and he takes on something like five hundred patients a year to do mostly reconstructive surgery, but some plastic surgery as well. I mean, this is someone he was an absolute expert in his field. He is, uh, he's steeped in the practicalities of it, but he is also a big thinker. Yeah, he's a plastic surgeon, but

but not a mirror cosmetic surgeon. And the article in question went into sort of around the turn of the millennium where plastic surgery stood about the idea that it's sort of sort of in this place where it's often looked down on um by people outside of the medical profession, and sometimes within the medical profession may be seen as as a as a lesser medical practice, which of course is not not the case when you look at the the the non cosmetic applications, when you're looking at people

who have undergone a serious injury, particularly facial injuries for instance, and finding ways to correct that and and bring a certain amount of normalcy back to that person's life. When you look at cleft palate and cleft lip reconstruction, yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot that goes on in plastic surgery that is not breast jobs. But but that tends to be sort of the the easy association that people make when you just hear plastic surgeon on TV. Oh,

she went to the plastic surgeon's office. That means she had something superficial and unnecessary done. But plastic surgery is bigger than that, much bigger. And uh, you know, as you could said that he has he's worked on reconstructing faces um winded warrior winded warrior causes, right, So we're

talking about catastrophic poly trauma. So if you're in if you're a soldier and you have undergone this trauma, what that means is that you have so many various problems going on um that you can't necessarily find a solution to all of those injuries. But what Dr Rosen can do is he can fashion a new knows um. But he can't restore that soldier's sense of smell, he can at least give some sort of normalcy back to that person.

So that's a lot of work that he does there. Um. He also is working on healthcare reform that this is really interesting. This is in the form of cybercare. He argues that our hospital system is just uh, you know, an outgrowth of the Civil War. In other words, it was set up to administer to a huge amount of massive casualties. And he's saying that that's just not the way that the world works today. And he is helping to revamp the national healthcare system Vietnam using cell phones

and laptops to link clinics, hospitals, and rural physicians. So this guy is a renaissance man. And like I said, he's a big thinker, which is extended over to his ideas about what we can do in terms of improving, not just augmenting, I should say, but really heightening our senses as a human being, in augmenting our experiences as a human being. Yeah, he's an amazing thinker. And then he really he's the cliche, you know, thinks outside the box.

He is the he's a bit of a rebel. He's he's questioning authority and questioning sort of normal approaches to things all the time. And you see that with with with various gifted minds out there. You know, it's it's not merely that they work really hard and are just geniuses within the confines of their profession, within the confines of their their role in society, but they actually think

beyond the typical constraints. It's true. Like, for instance, he says that a salamander can regenerate an arm in forty two days, So he says, somewhere in your own genome that ability still exists. He says, why can't we go ahead and find that figure that out so that we can regenerate a whole limb for ourselves. And he says, we can do it. It's just a matter of you know,

twenty to fifty years to coming up with that. Um so you know, he also looks at soldiers again who have had those catastrophic A traumas, and he says, why can't we use a whole body prophesis, like you know that's made out an exo skeleton. Um. You know, obviously cost is a factor in perception because it's not to it's not too normal. They see someone trapesing through a hallway,

who's you know, in case in excess skeleton. But he's got these ideas of how to make it work for humans and how to, as I said, augment the experiences for people and make it better. Yeah, he wants to make it better. He wants to fix it. You see that both in in healthcare reform, as you mentioned, but also but more importantly, in the human body. There's a great quote from that article that I think really sums up a lot about Rosen's outlook on not just plastic

surgery but life. He says, you know, I'm really proud of that face. And he's talking about some facial reconstruction that he performed on an individual who lost a lot of it to cancer. Because I'm really proud of that face. I didn't follow any protocol. There's no textbook to tell you how to fashion of face eaten away by cancer. Plastic surgery is the intersection of art and science. It's the intersection of the surgeons imagination with human flesh, and

human flesh is infinitely malleable. People say cosmetic surgery is frivolous boobs and noses, but it's so much more than that. The body is a conduit for the soul, at least

historically speaking. When you change what you look like, you change who you are so well, and it doesn't that kind of speak to a lot of what we've talked about in the podcast in terms of studies having to do with psychology the whole, like you you know, take it till you make it, or you know, if you assume a powerful posture, then your body responds physiologically, So you know, a lot of what he's saying is is there's a truth there that if you can change yourself

in that way, then certainly physically and mentally, things will follow. Okay, So let's get into some of his really fun post humanist dreams for the human body. Yeah, because he again he's all about making the changes necessary, arguably necessary in some cases to make us better beings. For instance, ocular implants new rods for the eyes to give a super binocular vision. UM soldier implants like, this is great a nose flash light because you know your nose is just there.

You know it's important for breathing. But you know optics to optic technology grow smaller and smaller, why not have a light up there? Imagine you sort of you know, you click one nostril and then a light shines out the other nose and you it's perfect for reading. It's a great idea. Really, now, I can just see eight year old really having fun with that when they blow their nose. Yeah. Yeah, like light flashes, like really bright

light every time you sneeze. But it's stuff like that, like when you say it, like we're even laughing because it's ridiculous. It's so different from what we're used to. But Rosen is the kind of guy that says, no, why are you laughing? Because this is actually really practical. Right, he's saying, in a military sense, why wouldn't you want

your soldier outfitted with us? Right? Because it makes perfect sense. Um. Cochlear implants, of course, are already in existence, but what he is suggesting is that you have cochlear implants that the hands are hearing, essentially giving us far superior auditory powers, so we'd be able to detect things miles away, again becoming superhuman. And uh, because, as we've mentioned before, the senses that we used to perceive the world are in

varying degrees limited or extremely limited even compared to other animals. Um. You know, it's like the mantis shrimp, which sees and all this vast array of colors that we can scarcely imagine. We've talked about when we're talking about bats, how it's almost impossible for us to really imagine what it's like to to quote unquote see the world as a bat. So instead of being limited by this this world that we've painted in just a few different colors, he's saying,

why don't we paint the world in more colors? Why don't we update our our machinery so that we can

paint a more brilliant world. You know, that's an interesting concept to think about when, especially in the U. I guess in the context of how we are bombard did with stimuli these days, and we've talked about this and the multitasking episodes quite a bit, so I wonder if if doing that, if sort of upping your experience of that stimuli would would make sense in this sort of new world where you're getting thrown things all the time.

So if you can, other words, if you can kind of tune in a little bit more, things are a little bit louder, things are a little bit brighter. Does that make sense for the modern human mind? Yeah, sort of opening ended question there, But I wanted to point out that Rosen is also a fan of equo location implants and fins fins, Yes, why not? I mean it comes down to a lot of you know, biomimicry. If you want to see how to swim, look for it.

Look at an animal that has evolved over the course of millions and millions of years to be an incredible swimmer. That's what you need to do. And that we do that to a certain extent, and looking at the shark skin and then adapting that into swimwear. Um. But he's talking about taking it even even further, and of course

his pet project, his pet thought experiment. I guess you could say surgical wings, because this is really where his engineering brain meets his his his reconstructive brain and brushes up against the brain of mad science for sure, But it is important to think of it as as a thought experiment. Um, he is not trying to do this or anything that we know of, uh, but but it is a great thought experience for just what are you know? What are we willing to do? What can we do?

And why are we why do we feel weird about going into some of these areas? Like for instance, so one of the examples he brings up just in plastic surgery, and one, I mean he brings it up. He brings it up at conferences because this this dude has been an amazing figure in plastic surgery. He travels all over the world, speaks a big conferences. He's an influential character. So he's not just his voice out on the fringe.

He's a leading figure. Um, So he brought up for instance, you have a man walks into the surgeon's office and he has an extra thumb. Um, he's then he is a doctor is allowed to take that thumb off. But but if a person comes in and says, hey, I would like an extra thumb, then he can't. He can't do that. That's that's just completely crazy. And then nobody adds extra thumbs to people. But he was saying that he there was one person that who was I would give a waiter server and had an extra thumb and

it actually aided that person in their job. This is an actual person with the second thumb. And he was saying, well, that that was helping that person out. So, yeah, why is it beyond the pail to add extra digits? Yeah?

And then there's also the breast uh example that he brings up, um, And this is he brought this up when people were pressing him on the wing issue because he'd mentioned it before, and then at a conference some people who were kind of you know, they're a little freaked out by this, and they're saying, would you really do that? Would you really give somebody wings? Or would you give somebody, you know, lizard skin? Would you really do any of these crazy things? And so he's bringing

up various examples to to make his his point. And he pointed out that that there was a lady that he'd come across that was the need of breast reconstruction and she wanted blue areolas and have anything to say about that, but he said, well, you know what's wrong with that? Um? You know what why not. If the person wants to have blue areolas, let him have blue areolas. How is that different from a lot of the things

we do to our bodies? You know, for some reason, of all the things that have been said on this podcast, that's the one thing that made me Bush don't ask me why, um, you know, And it's stuff like this I think that makes people sort of look at him a little sideways. But the fact of the matter, as I said, this is someone who is an absolute expert in his field and steeped in the technology. He's on the advisory panel for the Navy as well as NASA.

His insights on human machine interfaces brought him to the attention of the Department of Defense here in the States, and they've sought his views on virtual reality, future warfare, and bio terrorism. So people want his brain, they want to know what's going on and rumbling around in that brain is blue aery, aerials and uh, you know, nose

flashlights and surgical wings. Yeah, because again he's one of these guys that he thinks or sees something in the world and it's it's like it instantly, the wheels are turning, like he doesn't take anything for Granted, he thinks about it's possible applications, possible ways to improve it, like, for instance, with rhinoplastic which often is you know, typically about correcting rebuilding the nose, or or making cosmetic adjustments to the nose.

But he's saying that that hasn't even reached his full potential that we could we can improve upon the nose and then ultimately improvements that we make to the human body need not be a surgical in nature, but a genetic in nature. Okay, so he's talking about gaming the body now through genetics as opposed to plastic surgery or getting married eventually. Yeah. Um, Now again you have to kind of take his perspective on a little bit if this seems odd to you. I mean, again, here's someone

who's doing five hundred procedures a year. And keep in mind that in two thousand and ten, Americans spent over ten billion dollars on cosmetic surgery. So if you're in this field and you see this over and over again, and your futurist you can't help but sit there and say, how can I actually improve upon this process? And if this is the way that humanity is going, why not make it really incredible. Why not chase after the idea of flight, which is something that humans, you know, have

always secretly or not so secretly wanted for themselves. Yeah, so he's at this conference again, people keep pressing in on this issue, and finally he does answer. Because he's not the kind of guy that's gonna not tell you exactly what he thinks about a topic. He said, and they said, would you perform this surgery on someone if they want the blue arial the one? No, I think

he was talking about wings in this case. Yeah, I'm just still stuck on hypothetically, and we'll get into the mechanics possible mechanics of this surgery in a bet that he said, yes, I would. I can certainly see why we don't devote research money to it. I can see why the n i H would fund work on breast cancer over this. But I don't have a problem with altering the human form. We do it all the time. It's only are you Dao Christian conservatism that makes us

think this is wrong? Who here doesn't try to send their children to the best schools in the hopes of altering them? Who here objects to palm pilot a thing we we class to our bodies with which we receive rapid electronic signals. Who here doesn't surround themselves with a metal shell and travel at depth defying speeds. We have always altered ourselves for beauty or for power, and so long as we are not causing harm, what makes us

think we should stop? And again, that quote is from the excellent article by Laurence Slater two thousand one Harvard Magazine. Dr dayalis Um highly recommend everyone check that out. So we're going to actually close out the this episode right here, part one of Surgical Wings, and we're going to continue this in Surgical Wings Part two, where we'll really get more into the nitty gritty of how you could surgically make this uh seemingly impossible thing happen. I like this

analogy of surgery, and here we are. We're gonna leave you guys in the middle, but we're gonna suit tre you up in the next part. So statuned for that. So, gentle listeners, that was part one, make sure you listen in on Thursday for part two. If you want to check out more of what we're doing, make sure to

go to our YouTube channel mind Stuff. Also you can see our offerings at stuff to blow your mind dot com and hey, a show of hands, since we have been talking about this desire to take flight, to be able to do what birds and bats do. Um, how many of you have actually had the dream we're flying? Do you fall to the ground? Do you glide at street level and wave at people? Or do you sore

from way above? Let us know and you can do that by piping off an email at blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.