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Neurosurgeon The head of a very ill person should be transplanted
First head transplant in two years
An Italian researcher is currently causing a stir in the scientific world. The neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero describes how he could carry out a head transplantation in humans in just two years. The announcement is reminiscent of the famous movie classic "Frankenstein", in which a researcher creates a new creature from several body parts. This may not be a science-fiction if you believe the Italian neuroscientist from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group.
Medic intends to present process of transplantation at conference
Sergio Canavero had already disclosed his plan for the first head transplant in 2013. According to an article in the journal "New Scientist", the project is so far advanced that it could already be carried out in 2017. It is said that the process could prolong the lives of people "suffering from degeneration of their muscles and nerves, or advanced cancer. "In June, at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, the physician intends to show how the spectacular transplantation should proceed in detail."
Patient could move three weeks after transplant
In advance, Canavero explained how the transplant would work in general. Accordingly, the head of the recipient and the donor body would have to be cooled initially to extend the time in which the cells of the two can live without oxygen. According to the information, "the tissue is removed around the neck and the main vessels are connected with tiny tubes". Then "the spinal cord would be cut off and the recipient's head would be placed on the donor body". By means of the chemical polyethylene glycol, PEG for short, the ends of the spinal cord would be fused together. It is said that PEG is supposed to cross-link the fat in the cell membranes of the head and body. According to Canavero, after awakening from a three-week artificial coma, the patient may be able to move and feel.
Head transplants so far only in animals
The transplantation of a human head was and still is considered impossible for most scientists. So far, head transplant experiments have only been performed on animals. For example, the Russian physician Vladimir Demikhov created a two-headed dog in the 1950s. And Professor Robert White of the Metro Health Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio transplanted a monkey head in 1970. The experimental animals, however, usually lived only a few days after surgery. In addition, White renounced the connection of the nerve cords, so that although the rhesus monkeys breathe, but could not move.
Colleagues are skeptical
When it was reported in the 1990s that in the future heads of the terminally ill should be transplanted to healthy bodies of brain dead, said Professor Detlef Linke, senior physician at the Neurosurgical University Hospital Bonn, 1997 in conversation with the "doctors newspaper": " Such an operation would be risky, but technically not that problematic. "However, many scientists still see it differently today. For example, Canavero colleagues were also very skeptical. Harry Goldsmith, a surgeon from the University of California at Davis, recently told New Scientist magazine, "I do not think that will ever work." It's not just the procedure itself that poses too many problems, but also the mental ones and psychological difficulties in the patient would be unpredictable. Canavero, however, is convinced of his idea. "If people in the US or Europe do not want to do it, that does not mean that it can not be done anywhere else," said the surgeon. (Ad)
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