Since 2013, this project has been running through his mind … The Italian neurosurgeon, Sergio Canavero continues the project to perform the first human head transplant.
Head transplant: a $ 100 million operation
He detailed the operation at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons (AANOS) conference in the United States on June 12.
He took this opportunity to ask for $ 100 million from American billionaires (Bill Gates, in particular) in order to achieve this operation.
Transplant the head of a patient into a brain dead body
This type of transplant involves transplanting the head of a sick recipient onto the body of a brain-dead donor. Transplantation would allow, for example, quadriplegic patients to benefit from a healthy body to move again.
The first volunteer for this transplant is a 30-year-old Russian, Valery Spiridonov, suffering from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease which is characterized by incurable progressive atrophy of the muscles.
Head transplant in practice
In practice, doctors would cool the recipient’s head to preserve his brain before the body is transplanted.
It would be enough, according to Serge Canavero, to cut with an extremely fine blade allowing to cut the nerve fibers without dulling them. Then connect the head to its new body with polyethylene glycol, a chemical, and an electric current to speed up their reattachment.
Head transplant: doctors are skeptical
The profession remains skeptical of its project. This operation was already performed on a monkey in the 1970s and resulted in the death of the animal shortly after.
“If someone knew how to do what they claim to be able to do, we would have already demonstrated it in animal experiments and this research would have been published in serious scientific journals,” said Art Caplan, bioethicist at Langone Medical Center in New York.
Scientists also point the finger at the aftermath of the transplant. What is the risk of rejection ? How is the blood circulation going to be connected? How will the patient breathe while waiting for the phrenic nerve (which allows breathing) to grow back? Will the patient always be himself? Will consciousness follow in the new body? Questions to which the neurosurgeon does not really or very vaguely answer.
But the Italian is not discouraged: he wants to practice body transplant by 2016. To be continued.
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