For a long time, 31-year-old Valery Spiridonov appeared as the person whose head would be the first to be transplanted onto a new body during a unique operation that Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero planned for the end of 2017.
But lately, Canavero has increasingly hinted cautiously that Spiridonov’s priority is in question. The fact is, the surgeon has finally decided on the location of the operation: it will take place in Harbin, China, where Canavero will be assisted by a large team of Chinese doctors led by transplantologist Ren Xiaoping.
Since the transplant will take place in China, Valery Spiridonov will not be the first patient, Canavero confirmed recently in an interview with LLC OOM. - He will be a Chinese citizen. This is due to completely understandable circumstances. We will have to look for donors among local residents. And we cannot give snow-white Valery the body of a person of a different race. We cannot yet name the new candidate. We are in the process of choosing.
Canavero named the cost of the operation - $15 million - and planned it for Catholic Christmas, December 25, 2017. But two months before this date, he is going to conduct a trial operation on patients who are in a state of clinical death. This will be done to hone the technique of the most complex surgical manipulation.
Meanwhile, Canavero says significant progress has been made in medical experiments on animals.
Firstly, Canavero demonstrated a two-headed “mutant” - it was created when the head of a small one was sewn to the neck of a large laboratory rat. Secondly, on June 14, a report on another experiment by Canavero and his friend Ren Xiaoping was published in the scientific journal CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics. Surgeons cut the spinal cord of 15 laboratory mice, the wounds of 9 of them were treated with polyethylene glycol - a substance that, according to Sergio Canavero, should regenerate nerve fibers and restore the patency of signals. And another 6 animals from another group - the control group - were treated with saline solution. Moreover, after 28 days, all 9 rodents treated using the Canavero method began to recover and began to move their limbs (unlike the poor fellows from the control group).
This is a sign that we are on the right track,” said the Italian neurosurgeon.
However, the luminaries of world science are still skeptical about Canavero’s idea.
They say the stumbling block is to reconnect the ends of the cut spinal cord into a single whole. The experiment with the two-headed rat has nothing to do with this at all, because Canavero did not try to fuse the spinal cord, but simply connected the blood vessels that allowed the second head to live on the body of another rat. Much more successful experiments of this kind were carried out by the Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov back in the 50s of the last century. Canavero's rat died after 6 hours, and Demikhov's two-headed dogs lived for about a month.
Regarding the article published in CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics, there is no evidence that the spinal cord of laboratory animals was cut completely and not partially. All of Canavero's achievements are so far visible only on paper. Until now, he has not presented to the scientific world a single animal that would restore motor functions after a complete rupture of the spinal cord.
Before you announce a human head transplant, show me a dog walking on stage with a donor body, says Paul Zachary Myers, Ph.D. in biology and professor at the University of Minnesota. - If Dr. Canavero’s technology had worked, we would have already been presented with such evidence.
So maybe it’s for the best that Valery Spiridonov avoided the fate of becoming Canavero’s first test subject?
Transplantology is a science that is now advancing by leaps and bounds. Experiments related to organ transplants and the cultivation of their artificial analogues cost enormous amounts of money and require years of preparation, but at the same time they are becoming increasingly common. However, the statement of the Italian surgeon puzzled even experienced specialists: Sergio Canavero plans to perform a head transplant from one person to another in the next couple of years and has already found a volunteer for his daring experiment.
Scientific background
Until today, nothing like this operation has ever been carried out. And although more than a million people in the world have undergone transplantation of certain organs, no one has yet dared to connect such complex systems as the human head and body. Attempts have been made to carry out similar operations on animals, and this happened quite a long time ago. In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov achieved that a dog lived for several days with two heads: its own and a transplanted one.
Demikhov's two-headed dog
In 1970, in Cleveland, Robert J. White cut off the head of one monkey and sewed it on to another. And although the sewn head came to life, opened its eyes and tried to bite, the sewn creature managed to survive no more than a couple of days: the immune system began to reject the foreign body. The public greeted the experiment quite harshly, but White argued that such an operation could be successfully performed even on humans and tried to advance his theory. In 1982, Professor D. Krieger performed partial brain transplantation in mice, as a result of which seven out of eight experimental subjects were able to continue normal life. In 2002, the Japanese conducted experiments on complete head transplants in rats, and in 2014 the Germans proved that a brain divided by the spinal column can be connected so that over time the motor activity of the individual is completely restored.
Who and when?
Despite the vagueness of the results of his predecessors, Sergio Canavero is determined. He plans to perform a human head transplant operation as early as 2017. His position is active: he makes many presentations, where he clearly and clearly explains why and under what conditions such an operation can take place and even claim to be successful. His calculations do not seem realistic to everyone, but they inspire many people.
Among them is our compatriot Valery Spiridonov, who decided to put his own head at the disposal of the scientist. Valery lives in Vladimir and works as a programmer. He decided to take such a step because he suffers from an incurable illness: since childhood, he has been susceptible to muscle atrophy caused by the destruction of spinal cord neurons. Werdnig-Hoffman disease is incurable, moreover, those suffering from it rarely live past 20 years. Valery clearly feels irreversible deterioration and hopes that he will live to see the operation, which will give him hope for continuing his life. Those close to him fully and completely support his decision.
Valery Spiridonov - candidate for head transplant
But Valery is not the only candidate for participation in the experiment: there were enough people all over the world who wanted to take on this role. Canavero had already decided that the priority group would be patients with spinal muscular atrophy. Valery Spiridonov and Sergio Canavero have been corresponding for two years, discussing details and risks. Valery is also invited to the USA to a congress of neurosurgeons, where the Italian will present a detailed plan for his risky undertaking.
Why not?
Sergio Canavero is a high-class neurosurgeon; he managed to perform a successful operation, as a result of which motor functions were restored in a person with serious spinal cord damage. He managed to fuse neurons, which no one could do before.
And now he is quite optimistic. While he is looking for funds for his high-profile experiment.
The operation promises to last more than 36 hours, and its main stage will be the process of separating the head and attaching it to a new body. This involves cooling human tissue to 15°C and “gluing” the two parts of the spinal cord together using polyethylene glycol. Vessels, muscles, nerve tissues will be stitched, the spine will be secured. The patient will be placed in an artificial coma for a month, and during this time the spinal cord will be stimulated with special electrodes. After regaining consciousness, initially he will only feel his face, but the surgeon promises that within a year he will be taught to move.To carry out the operation, it will take more than 11 million dollars, a staff of 100 highly qualified surgeons and other medical personnel. Body donors are expected to be patients with fatal head injuries or those sentenced to death.
Critics and skeptics
Sergio’s colleagues are skeptical; they claim that there is not yet a sufficiently serious theoretical and experimental basis for such an operation, and they call their colleague a “media character.” So the Italian scientist has already received diametrically opposed assessments: from an adventurer and a charlatan to a harbinger of the medicine of the future.
Sergio Canavero - author of a revolutionary idea
A number of experts believe that, provided that a huge variety of all possible risks, details and nuances are taken into account, this operation can be considered technically feasible. Among the main difficulties are the very possibility of restoring the spinal cord, as well as graft-versus-host syndrome, which is expressed in the rejection of the organ by the immune system.
However, many scientists say that they are more “for” than “against”, because even in case of failure, such a project will expand the boundaries of such fields as transplantology, immunology, physiology, etc., and will also raise many questions and will outline ways to solve them.
The Italian’s opponents are not only among scientists: some are alarmed by the ethical component of the experiment. The attempt to play God is condemned not only by adherents of the Catholic religion, but also by ordinary citizens who consider such experiences to be an abuse of human authority on this earth. It was not for nothing that J. White was under police protection with his family for several years and, as a result, under pressure from the public, he completely covered up his experiments.
Canavero says that he will not go against the wishes of society and in the event of mass protests he will refuse to carry out the operation.
These are the general features of the upcoming experiment, and you can judge for yourself how desirable and plausible it is. And in conclusion, we invite you to watch a video report about an unprecedented operation and at the same time admire the hero himself and his interesting presentation about the spinal cord... on bananas.
Sensation: head transplant (video)
The world's first human head transplant will take place in China. This was announced by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who is going to perform this unique operation. Previously Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. But now, apparently, he decided to change plans.
30-year-old Valery Spiridonov has a complex genetic disease - spinal muscular atrophy. He is practically unable to move. Everyone expected that Valery would become the first person in history to receive a body transplant. Or the head; there is no consensus among doctors on what to call this transplant. He had been preparing for the most complex and so far unique operation of its kind since 2015.
"I'm not trying to commit some sophisticated method of suicide. No, it's not like that. I'm happy with what I have. And I have confidence that everyone understands what they're doing. It's just that someone technically should be the first. Why not me?" - he said.
The transplant was to be performed by a neurosurgeon from Italy, Sergio Canavero. Spiridonov flew to the USA to meet with him after online consultations.
And now, six months before the planned operation, news comes: the first patient to undergo a head transplant will not be a Russian, but a citizen of the People's Republic of China. The official reason is as follows: they decided to carry out the operation in China, and the donor and recipient must belong to the same race.
“We will have to look for donors among local residents. And we cannot give snow-white Valeria the body of a person of a different race. We cannot yet name the new candidate. We are in the process of choosing,” said Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon.
However, many are sure that it is more a matter of funding and national prestige. In China, head transplant surgery is funded at the government level. A separate clinic in Harbin will be allocated for this. Dozens of local doctors will help the Italian neurosurgeon. And the patient’s choice will most likely also fall on a citizen of the People’s Republic of China.
“The Chinese decided to undertake this operation because they want to win the Nobel Prize and establish their country as an engine of scientific progress. This is a kind of new space race,” Canavero is sure.
The operation is expected to last about 36 hours and cost $15 million. Once frozen, the heads will be separated from the bodies. And the recipient's head will be attached to the donor's body using special biological glue. Polyethylene glycol will be injected into the affected areas of the spinal cord; with its help, it has already been possible to restore connections between thousands of neurons in animals.
Trial operations on patients in a state of clinical death are planned for the fall of 2017. This is necessary to hone the technique of surgical manipulations. Previously, Sergio Canavero had already managed to sew on a second head of a mouse and transplant the head of a monkey. However, the monkey was euthanized 20 hours after the operation. And the transplanted mouse head did not send impulses to other parts of the body.
And many neurosurgeons still doubt that when performing an operation on a person it will actually be possible to successfully fuse the spinal cord and preserve the vital functions of the brain.
“Technically, there are many problems with stitching together many vessels, nerves, bones. But these are solvable options. The main problem is how to make impulses from the head through the stitched spinal cord pass down and back? Unfortunately, this technique does not work yet, there is no such technique ", says the Russian doctor.
The Italian surgeon himself estimates the chances of success as 90 percent. And I am sure that this will be a breakthrough in the field of transplantation, which will give a chance of life to people with many serious diseases - from spinal muscular atrophy to currently incurable forms of cancer.
When Dr. Canavero announced his grandiose project two years ago, the news shocked the scientific world and, of course, the project was criticized. Despite the skepticism of many scientists and surgeons, the Heaven project attracted the interest of thousands and thousands of physicians who wrote to the Italian scientist.
The first human head transplant will take place in China. The team of specialists will be led by Chinese doctor Ren Xiaoping, assisted by Sergio Canavero. Since the project will be funded by the Chinese government, the patient will be a Chinese citizen, and not Russian Valery Spiridonov, as previously planned.
Sputnik Italia learned from Sergio Canavero what results were achieved within the framework of this fascinating, but ethically ambiguous project:
- Please tell us at what stage the Heaven project is?
“In September, we published our first “proof of principle” research in Korea, conducted in collaboration with Rice University in Texas. Research has shown that mice whose spinal cords were cut, as is done in a head transplant, regained the ability to walk. These operations use an improved version of polyethylene glycol (PEG), so that 24 hours after surgery, nerve impulses begin to pass through the incision site again. A dog whose spinal cord was cut and repaired with PEG was able to run again 3 weeks after surgery.
These were early studies, and critics said we didn't have enough statistics. We were told that nerve impulses pass (through the incision site), but we had to prove that nerve fibers reappear at the incision site. In January, we published the first work that used a method for studying tissues and cells called immunohistochemistry. Using this method, we have proven that nerve fibers grow at the site of the incision.
-And what were the next steps?
To obtain sufficient statistical data, we used large rats for further research. The technique used was diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which allows you to see the fibers without the need to kill the animals. The rats were divided into two groups: the first group received placebo during surgery, and the second group received PEG. A month later, the rats from the second group could move, but the rats from the first group could not. Later we conducted the same experiment on dogs, and the result was similar. That is, we can now say that mice, rats and dogs with a severed spinal cord can regain the ability to move.
- And the first country in the world where surgery will be performed on humans will be China?
— Yes, the Chinese government wants a Chinese specialist to lead the transplant team of doctors. Therefore, in April we announced that, according to the law of the country, I would assist the Chinese neurosurgeon Xiaoping Ren and his team. It won't be long now, and in October you will learn sensational news.
Why can’t the first person be the Russian Valery Spiridonov, who was the first to offer himself for your operation?
— Here you touched on the main essence of my appeal to Russia. I want to emphasize that in Russia there are surgeons capable of performing such an operation, there is a specially equipped hospital, and there is the necessary money. But at the same time, when representatives of very wealthy Russians, billionaires, contacted me, they emphasized their interest in investing in my project, but not in charity. So now I have lost hope of convincing Russian investors to help me find a donor for a transplant that will save Valery Spiridonov. And I appeal to the Russians: Valery, a Russian citizen, will only be saved by an operation in Russia. China, naturally, will save the Chinese, besides, Valery is a representative of the white race, and he cannot be transplanted with the body of a Chinese, so as not to cause negative psychological reactions.
© photo: Sputnik / Kirill Kallinikov
I officially appeal to the Russian authorities and the Russian people to help me save the Russian citizen Valery Spiridonov. I am ready to assist a team of Russian surgeons during an operation in Moscow. If the authorities are unwilling to intervene, there is another option - crowdfunding. I ask 145 million Russian citizens for financial assistance. There is no other way to save Valery. I ask the Russian people to help save my compatriot. Let Russia, where the great neurosurgeon Surgeon Demikhov began his operations on animal head transplants in the last century, carry out this operation and begin a new era."
Recently, news appeared 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 debilitating while the mind remains active. The body donor will likely be someone who died from a severe head injury but whose body remains unharmed.
A human head transplant was announced in 2017 by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero
First human head transplant
The researchers say they have perfected the technique on mice, a dog, a monkey and, most recently, a human cadaver. The first human head transplant was planned to take place in 2017 in Europe. However, Canavero moved the operation to China because no American or European institute allowed such a transplant. This issue is very strictly 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 condemned the reluctance of the United States or Europe to carry out the operation. “No American medical school or center is pursuing this, and the US government does not want to support me,” he said.
The human head transplant experiment was met, to put it mildly, with considerable skepticism. Critics cite a lack of adequate preliminary and animal studies, a 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 uses the organs of executed prisoners for transplantation.
Some bioethicists argue that it is necessary to simply ignore this topic so as not to contribute to the “world circus.” However, we cannot simply deny reality. Canavero and Wren may not have succeeded 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 in advance.
Canavero envisions human head transplants as the natural next step in the transplant success story. Indeed, this story would be simply remarkable: people live for many years with donated lungs, livers, hearts, kidneys and other internal organs.
2017 marked the anniversary of the oldest living one given by a father to his daughter; both are alive and well 50 years later. Just recently we saw successfully transplanted arms, legs and another. The first completely successful one occurred in 2014, as well as the first live birth to a woman with a transplanted uterus.
While face and penis transplants are difficult (many still fail), head and body transplants present a whole new level of difficulty.
History of head transplant
The issue of head transplantation was first raised in the early 1900s. However, transplant surgery at that time faced many problems. The problem that vascular surgeons faced was that it was impossible to cut and then connect the damaged vessel and subsequently restore blood flow without interrupting circulation.
In 1908, Carrel and American physiologist, Dr. Charles Guthrie, performed the first dog head transplant. They attached one dog's head to the neck of another dog, connecting arteries so that blood flowed first to the decapitated head and then to the recipient's head. The severed head was without blood flow for approximately 20 minutes, and while the dog demonstrated auditory, visual, cutaneous and reflexive movements early after surgery, its condition only worsened and it was euthanized several 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 anastomotic 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 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 the methods available at the time for maintaining vascular nutrition during organ transplantation and was able to perform the first successful coronary artery bypass graft surgery in dogs in 1953. Four dogs survived for more than 2 years after surgery.
In 1954, Demikhov also attempted dog head transplants. Demikhov's dogs showed more functional abilities than Guthrie's and Carrel's dogs and were able to move, see and lap water. A step-by-step documentation of Demikhov's 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. A maximum survival rate of 29 days was achieved, which is more than in the Guthrie and Carrel experiment. This survival was due to the recipient's immune response to the donor. At this time, no effective immunosuppressive drugs were used, which could have changed the results of the studies.
In 1965, 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 part of the dog, not just the isolated brain. This required him to create different perfusion methods.
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 was ruptured at the second cervical vertebral body. The brain was then positioned between the jugular vein and the recipient's carotid artery. Using these perfusion techniques, White was able to successfully transplant six brains into the cervical vasculature of six large canine recipients. 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 activity of the graft brain with that of the recipient's brain. Moreover, using an implantable recording module, it also monitored the metabolic state of the brain by measuring oxygen and glucose consumption and demonstrated that after surgery, the transplanted brains were in a highly efficient metabolic state, another sign of the functional success of the transplant.
Head transplant for Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov
Back in 2015, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero proposed performing the first living human head transplant as early as 2017. To prove that the procedure would be possible, he reconstructed the severed spinal cord of a dog and attached the head of a mouse to the body of a rat. He even managed to find a volunteer in Valery Spiridonov, but it appears that the operation may not be moving forward as originally planned.
Doctors from all over the world claim that the operation is doomed to failure, and even if Spiridonov survives, he will not live a happy life.
Dr. Hunt Batjer, 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, which was to be performed by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, but after a while he changed his mind. Spiridonov suffered from severe muscle atrophy and was a wheelchair user all his life.
Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian man, volunteered to undergo this surgical procedure because he believed a head transplant would improve his quality of life. Valery was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This genetic disorder causes his muscles to break down and kills nerve cells in his spinal cord and brain. There is currently no known treatment.
How did the story of a head transplant for a Russian programmer end?
Valery recently announced that he would not undergo the procedure because the doctor could not promise him what he so wanted: that he would walk again and be able to have a normal life. Moreover, Sergio Canavero said that the volunteer may not survive the operation.
Considering that I can't rely on my Italian colleague, I have to take my health into my own hands. Fortunately, there is a fairly well-proven procedure for cases like mine, where a steel implant is used to support the spine in a straight position. – said Valery Spiridonov
A Russian volunteer will now seek alternative spine surgery to improve his life, rather than 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 published news about Russian volunteer Valery Spiridonov. However, after refusing 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 surgery, the immune system must be managed to prevent the head from being rejected from the donor body.
Some interesting facts:
- Spiridonov has already won. Doctors told him that he should have died from the disease several 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 operates a joystick on a wheelchair.
- Spiridonov is not the only person who has volunteered to become 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; according to preliminary estimates, the cost of the operation was between 10 and 100 million US dollars. He began selling hats, T-shirts, mugs and iPhone cases, all featuring the head on the new body.
Head transplant in China
In December 2017, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero performed the first head transplant from 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 a success.
Many scientists from all over the world believe that the successful human head transplant announced by Canavero is actually a failure! This is argued by the fact that no actual results of human head transplantation after transplantation have been shown to the public. Sergio Canavero gained a reputation in wide circles as a swindler and populist.
Dr. Canavero did the head transplant with another doctor named Xiaoping Ren from Harbin Medical University, a neurosurgeon from China who successfully grafted a head onto a monkey's 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 for the procedure over 18 hours. Answering a question from 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. The operation on human corpses has been completed. We had a head transplant operation, no matter what anyone says! – Canavero said at a conference in Vienna. He said an 18-hour operation on two cadavers showed it was possible to repair the spinal cord and blood vessels.
Sergio Canavero and Xiaoping Ren
Canavero has since been called the "Dr. Frankenstein of medicine" and has been criticized for his actions. You could 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 suffering from paralysis and spinal cord injuries to walk again.
These patients currently have no good strategies and their mortality rate is very high. So I'm trying to promote this technique to help these patients,” Professor Ren told CNBC. “This is my main strategy for the future.”
If doctors actually performed a head transplant on 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 cord injuries to walk again.
Ian 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, an attempt to do so , given the current state of technology, would be nothing less than a crime.
Any innovative procedure will undoubtedly face objections and skepticism, and requires a leap of faith. Although this 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 ethical questions about the procedure of creating a hybrid life.
If we transplanted your head onto my body, who would it be? In the West, we tend to think that who you are - your thoughts, memories, emotions - resides 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. A completely new body would force the brain to engage in a massive reorientation of all its new inputs, which could, over time, change the fundamental nature and connecting pathways of the brain (what scientists call the “connect”).
Dr. Sergio Canavero said at a conference in Vienna that the cadaveric head transplant 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 understanding 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 the “second brain” and is so vast that it can operate independently of our brain; that is, he can make his own “decisions” without the participation 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 serotonin in the body is produced in the gut, not in the brain! We know that the ENS has a powerful 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 collection of bacterial life that lives inside us; It turns out that we have more microorganisms in our bodies than in human cells. There are more than 500 species of bacteria 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 a severe shortage of donor organs. The average wait time for a kidney transplant is five years, a liver transplant is 11 months, and a pancreas transplant is two years. One corpse can donate two kidneys, as well as a heart, liver, pancreas and possibly other organs. Using the entire body for a single head transplant with slim chances of success is unethical.
Canavero estimates the cost of the world's first human head transplant to be $100 million. How much good can be done with such funds? It's actually not that hard to calculate!
When and if it becomes possible to repair severed spinal cords, this revolutionary advance should be aimed primarily at the many thousands of people who suffer paralysis as a result of a severed or injured spinal cord.
There are also unresolved legal issues. Who is a hybrid person legally? Is the legal person the “head” or the “body”? The body makes up more than 80 percent of the mass, so it is more of a donor than a recipient. Who legally will the children and spouses of the donor be to the recipient? After all, the body of their relative will live, but with a “different head.”
The story of head transplants does not end here; on the contrary, new facts, questions, and problems emerge every day.
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