Kandra Would Make Excellent Plastic Surgeons

[Trusk'our]

So, we've seen in the Bands of Mourning that a Kandra can donate a part of their own flesh to another person by taking a bite of them and copying them so that the the receiver's body doesn't reject the graft of Kandra flesh. Because of this, I'm willing to bet that a skilled Kandra with some motivation would be able to modify another person's body by removing and grafting on different pieces of their body. 

Kandra could repair major damage done to vital organs, grow and graft on new limbs, and they may even be able to revitalize an aged individual by slowly removing old, worn out cells and replacing them with new, fresh ones. Sort of like the Ship of Theseus, but with a human body.

Even outside medical practice, a Kandra may be able to reshape a person's body shape to something they feel is more desirable or even give people physical augmentations aside from healing them, such as giving them a stronger heart or shaper eyesight.

If a Kandra replaces enough of a person over time though, it does make me wonder if that individual would start to take on Kandra-like qualities, but that would depend on whether a Kandra's abilities are a combination physical and magical means, or whether they are purely magical.

But hey, if someone could become a Kandra this way, maybe Wayne and Melaan will be able to show up as a couple in a few centuries and bug the protagonists of one of the later Mistborn eras!  

[WandererNearby]

I certainly like this idea. Especially if a kandra could replace joints with new joints that are identical (or virtually identical) to the joints your body made. However, it makes me wonder about nerve cells. Would it restore the person's mind but with a blank brain? Second, do we think it would be truly identical to the genetic level because that would be a huge issue with aging. Third, if they could replace down to the genetic level, could they improve someone? Like, could they remove cancerous hands with non-cancerous hands? Could they function as an ethical version of that book "My Sister's Keeper"? This idea boggles the mind the more I think about it. 

[HSuperLee]

I will point out that Kandra are only capable of replacing soft tissues, so things like bones, teeth, fingernails, and hair can't be easily replaced. Apparently they can make cartilage for ears and noses, though, which will always bother me, since then they should be able to make cartilage true bodies, but my many issues with Kandra aside, they definitely have massive potential in the medical field. It really seems like the main issue that prevents them from revolutionizing the world is how few of them there are, and as a result, how many are needed for Harmony's purposes. Plus their traditions of staying hidden and separate from humanity. Hopefully they eventually find a way to start increasing their numbers, though I do see the ethical issues considering that requires two people die for each Kandra born, so that they can start being more direct.

[Trusk'our]

40 minutes ago, HSuperLee said:

I will point out that Kandra are only capable of replacing soft tissues, so things like bones, teeth, fingernails, and hair can't be easily replaced. Apparently they can make cartilage for ears and noses, though, which will always bother me, since then they should be able to make cartilage true bodies, but my many issues with Kandra aside, they definitely have massive potential in the medical field. It really seems like the main issue that prevents them from revolutionizing the world is how few of them there are, and as a result, how many are needed for Harmony's purposes. Plus their traditions of staying hidden and separate from humanity. Hopefully they eventually find a way to start increasing their numbers, though I do see the ethical issues considering that requires two people die for each Kandra born, so that they can start being more direct.

Technically, there is a way to Hemalurgicly remove attributes from a person without killing them, assuming that you can get them some way of healing the damage, such as through Feruchemical gold.

So that may be a viable option in the future. 

[cometaryorbit]

4 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

 Apparently they can make cartilage for ears and noses, though, which will always bother me, since then they should be able to make cartilage true bodies, but my many issues with Kandra aside,

This issue is weird, and it goes deeper than that. I can see cartilage true bodies not being a thing, since I don't think there is any land animal with that kind of skeleton and especially not a large biped like a human (not sure cartilage could support that kind of motion by itself)... but hair and bone are created by living cells. If kandra can manipulate their cells and biochemistry precisely enough to make tissue transplants that avoid rejection issues, why can't they make osteoblasts etc. or hair-producing cells?

Sure, it would take a long time* but it ought to be possible.

*Or would it? TenSoon eats a horse and incorporates its mass in like an hour? a couple hours? in HoA. That kind of metabolic speed is pretty insane.

I get that these sorts of limitations need to be there to keep kandra from turning into super biological nanotech factories, but I am not sure where the lines exactly are once you start thinking at the cell level, which Era 2 kandra are.

(The issues didn't really come up in Era 1 - everything they did there could be explained by manipulating whole tissues, without cellular-level or biochemical changes, as long as kandra blood was the same color as human.)

[HSuperLee]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

This issue is weird, and it goes deeper than that. I can see cartilage true bodies not being a thing, since I don't think there is any land animal with that kind of skeleton and especially not a large biped like a human (not sure cartilage could support that kind of motion by itself)... but hair and bone are created by living cells. If kandra can manipulate their cells and biochemistry precisely enough to make tissue transplants that avoid rejection issues, why can't they make osteoblasts etc. or hair-producing cells?

Sure, it would take a long time* but it ought to be possible.

*Or would it? TenSoon eats a horse and incorporates its mass in like an hour? a couple hours? in HoA. That kind of metabolic speed is pretty insane.

I get that these sorts of limitations need to be there to keep kandra from turning into super biological nanotech factories, but I am not sure where the lines exactly are once you start thinking at the cell level, which Era 2 kandra are.

(The issues didn't really come up in Era 1 - everything they did there could be explained by manipulating whole tissues, without cellular-level or biochemical changes, as long as kandra blood was the same color as human.)

I've been having those exact thoughts for years. In general, Sanderson seems t want kandra shapeshifting to occur on the genetic level, and I really hate that because the implications for that level of control is that kandra really should be able to make their own bones. Among many other potentially really powerful possibilities.

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/14/2022 at 4:52 PM, HSuperLee said:

I've been having those exact thoughts for years. In general, Sanderson seems t want kandra shapeshifting to occur on the genetic level, and I really hate that because the implications for that level of control is that kandra really should be able to make their own bones. Among many other potentially really powerful possibilities.

I think the issue is that if it doesn't, kandra impersonation will be too easy to figure out in higher tech eras.

But yeah, that suggests a lot of possibilities that are vastly beyond what we've seen kandra doing. Now maybe the "no bones" rule is some kind of Cognitive limitation, like cosmere healing has, and not actually part of their biology... but otherwise kandra shapeshifting seems to be a totally Physical/biological process.

There are WOBs suggesting the details aren't really decided yet - e.g. whether a kandra in human form could reproduce using its mimicked human DNA.