Chinese scientists say they have successfully grafted the head of one monkey onto another. Supported by Pr Canavero, they now want to test the technique on humans.
The first head transplant from a monkey to another monkey would have been successful! Despite the opposition of animal rights associations, the operation was indeed carried out in China, after the first successful transplants in mice. The proof that this operation is ready to be applied to humans, according to the authors of the test.
This transplant of the head of a monkey on the body of another monkey is the work of Prof. XiaoPing Ren, of Harbin Medical University (China), a specialist until now in mouse head transplantation. .
Once the operation is over, he claims that the monkey would have been kept alive for 20 hours, and his brain preserved!
The intervention was obviously carried out under the leadership of Prof. Sergio Canavero, at the origin of this project strongly criticized by part of the medical community. But despite the criticisms, the man still considers the operation as possible in humans as early as 2017! Recently, he even indicated that he had already found a first voluntary patient, Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian with spinal muscular atrophy.
And in Vietnam, the largest surgery center in the country (Hanoi) gave him its support a few days ago by starting the search for volunteers to undergo head transplants. The director of the hospital is still waiting to see if the first is a success …
The skeptical experts
“It is a real victory for humanity”, concluded Sergio Canavero in remarks reported by Science and the Future because “the monkey is a primate very close to man”, he recalled.
Asked by Why actor in 2013, Dr Marc Lévêque, neurosurgeon at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (Paris), for his part believed that connecting the head to a body in a functional manner is impossible: “anastomosing a spinal cord remains infeasible for the time being” . For this specialist, Sergio Canavero’s speech unfortunately risks raising false hopes in para- / quadriplegics to whom the Italian neurologist claims to be helping.
Source: YouTube video
Chinese scientists claim to have successfully grafted the head of one monkey onto another. They now want to test the technique on a human …
Posted by Why actor on Thursday, January 21, 2016
Head transplant: Chinese claim to have succeeded on 1 monkey and want to test on humans https://t.co/VEZzWh8k8j pic.twitter.com/sAQ4FzdFAq
– Pourquoidocteur (@Pourquoidocteur) January 21, 2016
