Wheelchair-bound Valery Spiridonov, 31, will be the first patient in the world to undergo a head transplant. Despite the risk, the Russian is ready to go under the surgeon's knife in order to get a new, healthy body.
Wheelchair-bound Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov announced that he would undergo a head transplant next year. The operation will be performed by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero. Despite the fact that Canavero has an ambiguous reputation in the scientific world, Spiridonov is ready to give his body and his own life into his hands. Details of the operation neither the doctor nor his patient have not yet disclosed. According to Spiridonov, Canavero will talk in more detail about the fantastic procedure in September. However, it is already known that the operation, which the entire scientific world is waiting for with excitement, will take place in December 2017.
Valery Spiridonov voluntarily agreed to become an experimental patient for Dr. Canavero - the first on whom the doctor would test his theories. He still has no other hope of finding a healthy body. Valery suffers from spinal muscular amyotrophy, also known as the Werdnig-Hoffmann syndrome. With this disease, the patient fails all the muscles, he has difficulty breathing and swallowing. The disease is incurable and only progresses over the years.
Most patients with Werdnig-Hoffmann syndrome die in the first years of life. Valery entered the 10% of the lucky ones who were lucky to live to adulthood. But his condition is deteriorating day by day. Valery says that he dreams of getting a new body before the disease kills him. According to him, relatives fully support him. 
“I perfectly understand all the risks of such an operation. There are many of them,” Valery says. “For the time being, we cannot even imagine exactly what could go wrong. to something else."
It is assumed that a healthy body of a donor who will be diagnosed with brain death will be used for the operation. According to Dr. Canavero, the operation will last 36 hours and will be performed in one of the most modern operating rooms in the world. The cost of the procedure will be about $18.5 million. According to the doctor, all the methods and technologies necessary for such an intervention already exist.
During the operation, the donor's and the patient's spinal cords will be cut at the same time. Spiridonov's head will then be aligned with the donor's body and bonded with what Canavero calls a "magic ingredient" - an adhesive called polyethylene glycol that will connect the patient's and donor's spinal cords. Then the surgeon will sew the muscles and blood vessels, and put Valery in an artificial coma for four weeks: after all, if the patient is conscious, with one awkward movement he can nullify all efforts.
According to the plan, in four weeks Spiridonov will wake up from a coma, already having the opportunity to move independently and speak in his former voice. Powerful immunosuppressants will help avoid rejection of the transplanted body.
Opponents of Dr. Canavero argue that he underestimates the complexity of the upcoming operation, especially in terms of connecting the patient's spinal cord and the donor. They call the Italian doctor's plan "pure fantasy". However, if successful, thousands of terminally ill and paralyzed patients around the world will receive hope for a cure.
At his press conference, Spiridonov also presented to the public a wheelchair with an autopilot of his own design. According to him, he wants to help people with disabilities around the world and hopes that his project will be a good addition to Dr. Canavero's plan. Valery also tries to help Canavero raise money for the operation by selling souvenir mugs and T-shirts. 
The world's first head transplant was performed in 1970 by American transplantologist Robert White at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Clinic in Cleveland, connecting the head of one monkey to the body of another. After the operation, the monkey lived for eight days and died due to rejection of the new organ. All eight days she could not breathe and move on her own, because the surgeon could not accurately connect the two parts of the spinal cord. 
Recently, news broke in the media that Sergio Canavero from Italy and his colleague Xiaoping Ren from China are planning to transplant a human head from a living person onto a donor corpse. Two surgeons have challenged modern medicine and are trying to make new discoveries. It is believed that the head donor will be someone with a degenerative disease whose body is depleted while the mind remains active. The body donor is likely to be someone who died from a severe head injury but whose body remained unharmed.
Human head transplant in 2017 was announced by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero
First human head transplant
The researchers claim to have perfected the technique on mice, a dog, a monkey and, more recently, a human corpse. The first human head transplant was scheduled to take place in 2017 in Europe. However, Canavero moved the operation to China because no American or European institution allowed such a transplant. This issue is very tightly regulated by Western bioethicists. It is believed that Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to return China to greatness by providing a home for such cutting-edge work.
In a telephone interview with USA TODAY, Canavero denounced the US or European reluctance to carry out the operation. "No American medical institute or center is pursuing this, and the US government doesn't want to support me," he said.
The human head transplant experiment was met with considerable skepticism, to say the least. Critics cite the lack of adequate prior and animal studies, the lack of published literature on the techniques and their results, unexplored ethical issues, and the circus atmosphere encouraged by Canavero. Many also worry about the origin of the donor body. The question has been raised more than once that China is using the organs of executed prisoners for transplantation.
Some bioethicists argue that it is necessary to simply ignore this topic in order not to contribute to the "circus of the world." However, one cannot simply deny reality. Canavero and Ren may not succeed in attempting a live human head transplant, but they certainly won't be the last to attempt a head transplant. For this reason, it is very important to consider the ethical implications of such an attempt beforehand.
Canavero presents the human head transplant as the natural next step in the transplant success story. And indeed, this story would be just wonderful: people live for many years with donated lungs, livers, hearts, kidneys and other internal organs.
2017 marked the anniversary of the oldest living, handed down by a father to his daughter; both are alive and well 50 years later. More recently, we have seen successfully transplanted arms, legs, and another. The first fully successful one occurred in 2014, as did the first live birth from a woman with a womb transplant.
Certainly face and penis transplants are difficult (many still fail), head and body transplants represent a whole new level of complexity.
Head transplant history
The issue of head transplantation was first raised in the early 1900s. However, transplant surgery at that time faced many challenges. The problem faced by vascular surgeons was that it was impossible to cut and then connect the damaged vessel and subsequently restore blood flow without interrupting blood circulation.
In 1908, Carrel and an American physiologist, Dr. Charles Guthrie, performed the first dog head transplant. They attached one dog's head to the neck of another dog, connecting the arteries so that blood would flow first to the decapitated head and then to the head of the recipient. The severed head was without blood flow for approximately 20 minutes, and while the dog demonstrated auditory, visual, skin reflexes, and reflex movements early after the operation, it only worsened and was euthanized a few hours later.
Although their work on head transplantation was not particularly successful, Carrel and Guthrie made significant contributions to the understanding of the field of vascular anastomosis transplantation. In 1912 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.
Another milestone in the history of head transplantation was achieved in the 1950s thanks to the work of the Soviet scientist and surgeon Dr. Vladimir Demikhov. Like his predecessors, Carrel and Guthrie, Demikhov made notable contributions to the field of transplant surgery, especially thoracic surgery. He improved on the methods available at the time to maintain vascular nutrition during organ transplantation and was able to perform the first successful coronary bypass operation in dogs in 1953. Four dogs survived for more than 2 years after the operation.
In 1954, Demikhov also attempted to transplant the heads of dogs. Demikhov's dogs demonstrated more functionality than Guthrie's and Carrel's dogs and were able to move, see and lap water. Demikhov's step-by-step documentation of the protocol, published in 1959, shows how his team carefully preserved the blood supply to the donor dog's lungs and heart.
Two-headed dog from Demikhov's experiment
Demikhov showed that dogs can live after such an operation. However, most dogs lived only a few days. The maximum survival of 29 days was achieved, which is more than in the experiment of Guthrie and Carrel. This survival was due to the immune response of the recipient to the donor. At this time, effective immunosuppressive drugs were not used, which could change the results of the studies.
In 1965, the American neurosurgeon Robert White also attempted a head transplant. His goal was to perform a brain transplant on an isolated body, contrary to Guthrie and Demikhov, who transplanted the entire upper body of the dog, not just the isolated brain. This required him to develop various perfusion techniques.
Maintaining blood flow to the isolated brain was Robert White's biggest challenge. He created vascular loops to preserve the anastomoses between the internal maxillary and internal carotid arteries of the donor dog. This system was called "autoperfusion" because it allowed the brain to be perfused by its own carotid system even after it had been torn at the second cervical vertebral body. The brain was then placed between the jugular vein and carotid artery of the recipient. Using these perfusion techniques, White was able to successfully transplant six brains into the cervical vasculature of six large recipient dogs. The dogs survived between 6 and 2 days.
With continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring, White monitored the viability of the transplanted brain tissue and compared the brain activity of the transplant with that of the recipient. Moreover, using an implantable recording module, it also monitored the metabolic state of the brain by measuring oxygen and glucose consumption and demonstrated that the transplanted brains were in a highly efficient metabolic state after the operation, another indication of the functional success of the transplant.
Head transplant for Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov
Back in 2015, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero proposed the first live human head transplant as early as 2017. To prove that the procedure would be possible, he reconstructed a severed dog's spinal cord and attached a mouse's head to a rat's body. He even managed to find a volunteer in the person of Valery Spiridonov, but it seems that the operation may not move forward as originally planned.
Doctors from all over the world say that the operation is doomed to failure, and even if Spiridonov survives, he will not live a happy life.
Dr. Hunt Butger, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, said: “I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Valery Spiridonov volunteered to undergo the world's first full head transplant, to be performed by the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, but after a while he changed his mind. Spiridonov suffered from severe muscular atrophy and was a wheelchair user all his life.
Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man in his 30s, volunteered to undergo this surgical procedure because he believes the head transplant would improve his quality of life. Valery was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This genetic disease causes his muscles to break down and kills nerve cells in his spinal cord and brain. There is currently no known cure.
How did the story of a head transplant to a Russian programmer end?
Recently, Valery announced that he would not undergo the procedure, because the doctor could not promise him what he so wanted: that he would walk again, be able to have a normal life. Moreover, Sergio Canavero said that the volunteer may not survive the operation.
Given that I cannot rely on my Italian colleague, I must take my health into my own hands. Luckily, there is a fairly well proven operation for cases like mine where a steel implant is used to keep the spine straight. Valery Spiridonov said
The Russian volunteer will now seek alternative spinal surgery to improve her life, instead of undergoing an experimental procedure that has been criticized by several researchers in the scientific community.
At the beginning of 2018, foreign media regularly and very actively posted news about the Russian volunteer Valery Spiridonov. However, after the refusal of the operation, their interest in the disabled person subsided.
Human head transplantation is a very complex procedure, as it requires reconnection of the spine. After the operation, it is necessary to manage the immune system to prevent rejection of the head from the donor body.
Some interesting facts:
- Spiridonov has already won. The doctors told him that he should have died from an illness years ago.
- Valery works from home in Vladimir, about 180 kilometers east of Moscow, running an educational software business.
- Spiridonov is terminally ill. He is wheelchair bound due to Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. A genetic disorder that causes motor neurons to die. The disease has limited his movements to feed himself, he controls the joystick on a wheelchair.
- Spiridonov is not the only person who volunteered to be the first potentially successful head transplant patient. Nearly a dozen others, including a man whose body is full of tumors, asked doctors to go first.
- Spiridonov came up with a new way to help finance the operation, with preliminary estimates that the cost of the operation was between US$10 million and US$100 million. He began selling hats, T-shirts, mugs, and iPhone cases, all featuring a head on a new body.
Head transplant in China
In December 2017, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero performed the first head transplant on two cadaveric donors in China. With this procedure, he attempted to make spinal fusion (taking an entire human head and attaching it to a donor body) a reality and declared that the operation was successful.
Many scientists around the world believe that the successful human head transplant claimed by Canavero is actually a failure! This is argued by the fact that no actual results of a human head transplant after transplantation have been shown to the public. Sergio Canavero gained a reputation in wide circles as a fraudster and populist.
Dr. Canavero did a head transplant with another doctor named Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical University, a Chinese neurosurgeon who successfully grafted a head onto a monkey body last year. Canavero and Dr. Ren were not the only ones involved in this operation. More than 100 doctors and nurses were on standby during this procedure for 18 hours. Answering the question of journalists “how much does a head transplant cost”, Canavero said that this procedure cost more than 100 million US dollars.
The first head transplant in China was successful. Operation on human corpses completed. We did a head transplant, no matter what anyone says! Canavero said at a conference in Vienna. He said that an 18-hour operation on two corpses showed that it was possible to restore the spinal cord and blood vessels.
Sergio Canavero and Xiaoping Ren
Since then, Canavero has been called the "Dr. Frankenstein of medicine" and has been criticized for his actions. We can say that Sergio Canavero is a man who plays god or wants to cheat death.
Ren and Canavero hope their invention could one day help patients with paralysis and spinal cord injuries walk again.
These patients currently do not have good strategies and their mortality is very high. So I try to promote this technique to help these patients,” Prof. Ren told CNBC. “This is my main strategy for the future.”
If doctors really did a head transplant to a person (a living recipient), it would be a breakthrough in the field of transplantology. Such a successful operation could mean saving terminally ill patients, as well as enabling people with spinal injuries to walk again.
Jan Schnapp, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said: “Despite Professor Canavero’s enthusiasm, I cannot imagine that ethics committees at any reputable research or clinical institution will give the green light to live human head transplants in the foreseeable future… Indeed, attempting such an act , given the current state of the art, would be nothing short of a crime.
Any innovative procedure is sure to face objections and skepticism, and requires a leap of faith. Although it all seems impossible, a human head transplant would revolutionize the field of medicine if successful.
Ethical Issues
Some doctors say the chances of success are so low that attempting a head transplant would be tantamount to murder. But even if it were feasible, even if we could connect the head and body and have a living person at the end, this is only the beginning of the ethical questions about the procedure for creating a hybrid life.
If we transplanted your head onto my body, who would it be? In the West, we tend to think that what you are - your thoughts, memories, emotions - is entirely in your brain. Since the resulting hybrid has its own brain, we take it as an axiom that this person will be you.
But there are many reasons to worry that such a conclusion is premature.
First, our brain is constantly monitoring, reacting and adapting to our body. An entirely new body would cause the brain to engage in a massive reorientation to all of its new inputs, which could over time change the fundamental nature and connectivity of the brain (what scientists call a "connect").
Dr. Sergio Canavero stated at a conference in Vienna that the head transplant on a cadaver was successful.
The brain will not be the same as it was before, still attached to the body. We don't know exactly how it will change you, your sense of self, your memories, your connection to the world - we only know that it will.
Second, neither scientists nor philosophers have a clear idea of how the body contributes to our essential sense of self.
The second largest nerve cluster in our body, after the brain, is the bundle in our gut (technically called the enteric nervous system). The ENS is often described as a "second brain" and is so vast that it can operate independently of our brain; that is, it can make its own “decisions” without the involvement of the brain. In fact, the enteric nervous system uses the same neurotransmitters as the brain.
You may have heard of serotonin, which may play a role in regulating our moods. Well, about 95 percent of the body's serotonin is produced in the gut, not the brain! We know that the ENS has a strong influence on our emotional states, but we do not understand its full role in determining who we are, how we feel, and how we behave.
Moreover, there has recently been an explosion in research into the human microbiome, the large mix of bacterial life that lives within us; It turns out that we have more microorganisms in our body than in human cells. More than 500 types of bacteria live in the gut, and their exact composition differs from person to person.
There are other reasons to be concerned about a head transplant. The United States suffers from an acute shortage of donor organs. The average waiting time for a kidney transplant is five years, a liver transplant is 11 months, and a pancreas is two years. One corpse can give two kidneys, as well as a heart, liver, pancreas, and possibly other organs. Using the whole body for a single head transplant with a slim chance of success is unethical.
Canavero estimates that the cost of the world's first human head transplant is $100 million. How much good can be done with such funds? Calculating is actually not so difficult!
When and if it becomes possible to repair a severed spinal cord, this revolutionary achievement should be aimed primarily at the many thousands of people who suffer from paralysis as a result of a torn or injured spinal cord.
There are also unresolved legal issues. Who is a hybrid person legally? Is the "head" or the "body" the legitimate person? The body is more than 80 percent of the mass, so it is more of a donor than a recipient. Who according to the law will be the children and spouses of the donor to the recipient? After all, the body of their relative will live, but with a “different head”.
The history of head transplantation does not end there, on the contrary, every day new facts, questions, problems emerge.
The science that studies organ transplantation is called transplantology. Until a few decades ago, the movement of tissues from one organism to another was considered something incredible. In modern surgical practice, transplantation of internal organs is widespread. To a greater extent, this is practiced in developed countries with a high level of medical provision. Transplantation of the liver, kidneys, heart is successfully carried out. In recent years, doctors have begun to perform limb transplants. Despite the high professionalism of surgeons, some operations end in failure. After all, the body does not always "accept" other people's organs. In some cases, tissue rejection is possible. Despite this, a well-known practicing surgeon from Italy decided to take an incredible risk. The doctor is planning a head transplant operation. To many, this idea seems incredible and doomed to failure. However, surgeon Sergio Canavero is confident that head transplantation will be a huge breakthrough in medicine. To date, studies have been carried out and attempts have been made to implement this manipulation on laboratory animals.
Head transplant operation: description
In 2013, an Italian surgeon made a sensational announcement to the world. He planned an operation to transplant the head of a living person onto the body of a corpse. This procedure has interested people suffering from serious diseases that cause immobilization. Surgeon Sergio Canavero has already contacted the intended head donor. It turned out to be a young man from Russia. The patient was diagnosed with a severe pathology of the nervous system - congenital spinal amyotrophy. At the moment, Valery Spiridonov is 30 years old. Despite quality care, his condition is rapidly deteriorating. The only functioning part of the patient's body is the head. Valery Spiridonov is aware of all the risks of the planned event, but he agrees to go for it. The first human head transplant is expected to take place in 2017.
Sergio Canavero suggests that the transplant will take about 36 hours. To carry out all stages of the operation, more than 100 qualified surgeons will be needed. During the transplant, doctors will change several times. A head transplant is a very complex surgical procedure. To implement it successfully, you will need to connect many vessels, nerve fibers, bones and soft tissues of the neck. The most difficult stage of the operation will be fastening spinal cord. For this purpose, a special adhesive based on polyethylene glycol was made. Thanks to this substance, the growth of neurons is carried out. Each of the stages of the operation is considered risky and can be fatal. However, this does not frighten the patient Valery Spiridonov. The doctor who conceived the sensational operation is also optimistic. Canavero is almost sure of a favorable outcome of the procedure.
Ethical aspects of head transplantation
Such a topic as a human head transplant causes stormy emotions and controversy not only among doctors. In addition to the difficulties in performing transplantation and the risks to the life of the patient, there is another side to the coin. So, many people consider the conceived procedure unacceptable from a religious and ethical point of view. Indeed, it is difficult to realize that the head of a living person will be separated from the body and attached to the neck of a dead person. Nevertheless, people suffering from severe progressive pathologies do not have to think about ethics. For many patients, a head transplant will be an incredible miracle. After all, people doomed to disability will have a new body. Due to the fact that the operation has not yet been carried out, and its outcome is unknown, the public has a conflicting attitude to this issue.
Research
The first research in the field of head transplantation was the experience of the scientist Charles Guthrie. It was held in 1908. The experiment consisted of transplanting a second head onto the dog's neck. The animal did not live long, but it was possible to note a slight reflex activity of the transplanted body part.
In the 1950s, the Russian scientist Vladimir Demikhov managed to achieve better results. Although his laboratory animals also did not last long after transplantation, the transplanted heads were fully functional. Demikhov significantly reduced the time of hypoxia of separated tissues. Similar operations on dogs were later carried out by Chinese scientists. In the 1970s, White transplanted a monkey's head. At the same time, the animal's sense organs functioned.
In 2002, experiments were carried out on laboratory rats in Japan. As for the planned intervention, polyethylene glycol was used. The dissected tissues were refrigerated to prevent cell death. In addition, Sergio Canavero stated that in his latest research involving monkeys, a head transplant was recently performed. She ended happily. The scientist regards a positive result as a signal to conduct an experiment on a person. If the public and the scientific community approve this project, soon people will know about its results.
Human head transplant: scientists' opinion
Despite the positive attitude of the Italian surgeon, scientists and doctors do not share his enthusiasm. Most of them do not believe in the success of the venture. In addition, many doctors believe that a head transplant is ethically unacceptable. The pessimism of colleagues does not affect the decision of the scientist. Canavero recently announced that the transplant will take place with the consent of the members of the state board.
What diseases require surgery
At the moment, it is too early to say whether such an operation will be performed in practice in the future. However, with a favorable outcome, the scientist will experience incredible success. If head transplantation becomes possible, many patients will have healthy bodies. Among the indications for transplantation are:
- Tetraplegia developed against the background of cerebrovascular accident.
- Muscular spinal atrophy.
- Spinal cord injury at the level of the cervical vertebrae.
Difficulties of surgery
A head transplant is a technically complex procedure. In the course of its implementation, doctors may encounter many difficulties. Among them:
- Tissue death during head removal. To prevent this, scientists intend to cool the head to 15 degrees. At the same time, neurons must maintain their viability.
- Risk of rejection of the transplanted body part.
- Prolonged connection of the spinal cord after surgery. To nervous tissue correctly matched, the patient is scheduled to enter a coma for 1 month.
Possible outcomes of head transplant surgery
Given that such operations have not been performed on people before, it is impossible to predict the outcome of this procedure. Even if all the manipulations are performed correctly, it is not known how this experiment can end. Scientists do not exclude the possibility that the spinal cord will be damaged, and the patient will not be able to move. However, even in this case, the operation will be an incredible breakthrough in transplantation.
head transplant cost
How much does a head transplant cost and when will it be put into practice? It is not yet possible to answer these questions. However, some information is available. Thus, an assessment of the equipment and necessary materials for the planned transplant showed that the cost would be about $11 million. In addition, in case of a favorable outcome, a long rehabilitation will be required. According to the Italian scientist, the patient will be able to move independently a year after the operation.
Human is a very important stage in the development of the science of transplantology. Previously, such an operation seemed impossible, since it was not possible to connect the spinal cord and brain. But according to the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, there is nothing impossible and this operation will still happen.
Some historical data
Even before the 1900s, it was described only in science fiction books. For example, H.G. Wells, in The Island of Doctor Moreau, describes experiments on transplanting animal organs. Another science fiction writer of that time, in the novel Professor Dowell's Head, proves that in the 19th century organ transplants could only be dreamed of. A human head transplant was not just a myth, but a ridiculous tall tale.
The world turned upside down in 1905 when Dr. Edward Zirm transplanted the recipient's cornea, and it took root. Already in 1933 in Kherson, the Soviet scientist Yu. Yu. Voronoi performed the first successful person-to-person. Every year, organ transplant operations are gaining momentum. To date, scientists are already able to transplant the cornea, heart, pancreas, kidneys, liver, upper and lower limbs, bronchi and genital organs of men and women.
How and when will the head be transplanted for the first time?
If in 1900 one of the scientists seriously spoke about transplanting a human head, most likely, he would have been considered abnormal. However, in the 21st century, this is spoken about with all seriousness. The operation has already been scheduled for 2017, and preparatory work is currently underway. A human head transplant is a very complex operation, which will involve a huge number of neurosurgeons from around the world, but the transplantation will be overseen by the Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero.
In order for the first human head transplant to be successful, it will be necessary to cool the head and the donor body to 15 ° C, but only for 1.5 hours, otherwise the cells will begin to die. During the operation, arteries and veins will be sutured, and a polyethylene glycol membrane will be installed in the place where the spinal cord is located. Its function is to connect neurons at the site of the incision. The human head transplant operation is expected to take about 36 hours and cost $20 million.
Who will take the risk and for what?
The question that worries many people is: "Who is the daredevil who decided to have a brain transplant?" Without delving into the depths of the problem, it seems that this undertaking is quite risky and could cost someone their life. The person who agreed to the head transplant is the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. It turns out that a head transplant is a necessary measure for him. Since childhood, this most talented scientist has been ill with myopathy. This is a disease that affects the muscular structure of the entire body. Every year the muscles weaken and atrophy. located on the anterior layers of the spinal cord are affected, and the person loses the ability to walk, swallow and hold his head.
The transplant should help Valery restore all motor functions. Undoubtedly, the operation to transplant a human head is very risky, but what to lose for someone who does not have long to live? As for Valery Spiridonov (he is currently 31 years old), children with such a disease most often do not even reach adulthood.
Difficulties in head transplantation
This is a very difficult task, which is why for almost 2 years preparatory work will be carried out before the operation. Let's try to figure out what exactly the difficulties will be and how Sergio Canavero plans to cope with them.
- Nerve fibres. Between the head and the body there is a huge number of neurons and conductors that do not recover after damage. We all know cases when, after a car accident, a person managed to survive, but he lost his motor activity for life due to damage to the cervical spinal cord. At the moment, highly qualified scientists are developing techniques that allow the introduction of substances that will restore damaged nerve endings.
- Fabric compatibility. A human head transplant requires a donor (body) to which it will be transplanted. It is necessary to choose a new body as accurately as possible, because if the tissues of the brain and torso are incompatible, swelling will occur and the person will die. At the moment, scientists are finding a way to deal with tissue rejection.
Frankenstein could serve as a good lesson
Despite the fact that it would seem that a head transplant is very exciting and beneficial for society, there are a number of negative circumstances. Many scientists from all over the world are against head transplantation. Without knowing the true reasons, this seems rather strange. But let's remember the story of Dr. Frankenstein. He had no evil thoughts and sought to create a person who helps society, but an uncontrollable monster became his brainchild.
Many scientists draw a parallel between the experiences of Dr. Frankenstein and the neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero. They believe that a person who gets a head transplant can become uncontrollable. Moreover, if such an experiment succeeds, humanity will have the opportunity to live indefinitely, over and over again transplanting its head onto new young bodies. Of course, if this is a good promising scientist, then why shouldn't he live forever? What if it's a criminal?
What will a head transplant bring to society?
After we figured out whether a human head transplant is possible, let's think about what this experience can bring to modern science. In the world there are a huge number of diseases associated with disruption of the spinal cord. And although this part of the body has been thoroughly studied by many scientists of the world, an absolute solution to the problems associated with the innervation of the spinal cord has not been found.
In addition, in the cervical region there are cranial nerves that are responsible for vision, tactile sensations, and touch. No neurosurgeon has yet been able to cure the disruption of their work. If the head transplant is successful, it will put the majority of the disabled on their feet and save the lives of millions of people on the planet.
