The new X-Files movie, subtitled “I Want to Believe,” left me wanting to leave.

There was plenty of X-Files camp, the way X-Files fans like it: overwrought dialogue, cliché spooky music, constant foul weather, and perpetual furrowed brows. And there was no shortage of severed body parts in the snow, creepy Russian doctors hefting stolen bodily organs, and long-haired Irish pedophile priests who commune with the dead and bleed from the eyes. (Ok, there’s only one of those.) But I wanted more conspiracy, and I wanted more funny. More dry wit to make the other stuff more bearable. More moments like the one at the pedophile compound when Mulder suggests they “stay out of the activities room.”

But why dwell on the film when there are scientific questions to be answered? What I really wanted to know: Is it possible to do a human head transplant? Those Russian doctors in the movie appeared to think so, and might have succeeded had the dynamic duo of Scully and Mulder not intervened. In real life, surgeons are now capable of doing a face transplant (from a cadaver to a live recipient). But a whole head?

In the 1950s, Soviet scientists stuck a puppy's head on another dog's body. The results were reported in a National Geographic documentary that aired in England. In a nutshell: The second head barked for a couple of days, but the two-headed dog soon expired.

What about today, with all the advances in science? Is a head transplant possible?

“Theoretically, I’ll give you a resounding maybe,” wrote Paul Pietsch, professor emeritus in the Indiana University optometry department, in an email. The man would know. He managed to graft an embryonic salamander head onto the eye socket of another salamander (that had its own head already). The graft developed normally, with working eyes and snapping jaws. (There was a purpose to the madness— Pietsch is no Frankenstein—something about a study requiring radioactive isotopes injected into eye muscles.)

Whether a human head transplant would function is questionable. Writes Pietsch in response to the idea, “Egad!” And: “The donated human head probably would not integrate into the host’s body (even if we prevent its rejection). While it could be spliced into the host’s blood supply and thus kept alive,” it would be just “a living hunk of proud flesh (ugh!).” And finally, wisely, he notes, “Who in the heck would want such a thing?”

Well, in the X-Files movie, apparently the demand is there. The ugly old bald guy wants to keep his own head (that in and of itself begs questions) but needs to replace his failing body. (If the guy's severed noggin wakes up and finds his cronies have attached him to a young woman swimmer's body, I suspect heads will roll.)

My take-home messages: Rent (or skip) the film. Oh, and be an organ donor.

-Jennifer Holland

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