(urth) note Re: Short Sun blog

[Jane Delawney]

On 23/09/10 08:01, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> "Typhon" shares human anatomy with Piaton, who *is* saint-named (the 
> original was martyred by having the top of his skull sawed off, per 
> the physicians' original plan), and his mind powers are impressively 
> strong but don't put him categorically into nonhuman status with folks 
> like Decuman and the Pelerine in the tent running around.

There is no seed of doubt sown anywhere that Piaton is anything other 
than a human being - so it may be notable (perhaps) that there's no 
suggestion in any of Typhon's speechifying to Sev that there might have 
been a danger of rejection of the transplant ie. Piaton's body rejecting 
Typhon's head as foreign tissue - all Typhon appears to have been 
concerned about is the mastery of bodily functions.

Anti-rejection drugs are available nowadays for transplant recipients 
and are moderately effective, and of course such could undoubtedly have 
been given to Typhon/Piaton by his physicians. However, such medications 
are designed for prevention of rejection of *human* tissue by *human* 
recipients. I would imagine the problems would be duh, 'somewhat' 
greater if Typhon were un-human; and would outweigh any problems 
regarding mastery of the last autonomic functions by quite a bit. One 
can only speculate on the putative state of medical science in Typhon's 
era, but the fact that mastery of bodily functions is mentioned by 
Typhon while tissue rejection is not strongly suggests to me that Typhon 
must have been just as human, by origin, as his 'organ donor' Piaton; if 
not in fact of the same blood group and tissue type.
>
> His nonbornness makes him a candidate for a eugenical test tube baby, 
> who could perfectly well be from outer space where that sort of thing 
> is in fashion but he needn't literally be an alien monster when a 
> human tyrant is more than sufficiently monstrous. 
agreed.

jd

ps I'm making an assumption that GW would have been very well aware of 
the assorted problems associated with organ transplantation and 
rejection - these were well known even in the 1970s, though medical 
means of dealing with them have advanced since then.