Neurosurgeon Plans For First Human Head Transplant

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

Neurosurgeon to attempt world's first head transplant

 

 

An Italian neurosurgeon has unveiled plans to perform the first human head transplant by the end of 2017. Dr Sergio Canavero announced his plan at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons in the US state of Maryland on Friday, saying he believes he has a 90 percent chance of success.

He said his patient will be a 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, who has the muscle-wasting disease, Werdnig-Hoffmann.

"Of course there is a margin of risk, I cannot deny that," Canavero said. "I made the announcement only when I was pretty sure I could do it."

Both men, who have been in regular contact through video chats, believe the controversial procedure is Spiridonov's best hope, the Reuters news agency reported.

[lawildcat]

If everything works out, I know a lot of people who could benefit from this.

[hoops5]

So basicly he will decapite one man, and put it another body the is alive, but brain dead?

[spindoc]

What a moron Jenner is for not waiting. How much simpler would it all have been?

[ColonelCrazy]

The neuro thinks he has a 90% chance of success, then states that he's "pretty sure" he can do it.

 

Call me crazy, but "pretty sure" ain't 90% in my book.

[OlDog75]

OHH BOOOYY!!!

 

[video=youtube;8H3dFh6GA-A]

[rjs4470]

How would you preserve spinal function and not have the patient end up a quadriplegic?? And if you have that part worked out, how do you keep the brain alive while you are connecting all the vessels and nerves??

[Blue Magic]

^ To add to that, you would think if they could cut a spinal cord and attach it on another spinal cord and maintain nerve function, why wouldn't one be able to reverse a quadriplegic by now?

[InItToWinIt]

Have not read the article, but is he literally cutting off one person's head and putting it on another body? I have no idea what to think, but the fact that we can do that is incredible.

[75center]

Creepy.

[TheDeuce]

0% chance this ever happens, and less than that of it being successful.

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

More info on the surgery here...

 

The human head transplant surgeon has pitched his idea in the US - ScienceAlert

 

You can read more about the surgery here, but basically it goes like this: first, Canavero will cool Spiridonov's brain right down to keep it alive while it’s cut off from its blood supply. He’ll then cut the heads off both bodies using a special nano blade, before attaching Spiridonov’s head to the donor body. Using a chemical called polyethylene glycol and electrical currents, he’ll encourage the cells of the two severed ends of spinal cord to mesh together, and will then stitch the rest of the blood vessels and muscles in the head to the new body.

He believes the attachment surgery will only take a day, but he’ll keep Spiridonov in a comatose state for three or four weeks after the operation to allow his system time to heal. Canavero estimates that all up, the patient will take around 12 months to heal fully.

Of course, it’s a big risk - for starters, there’s no evidence that we can actually get a severed spinal cord to fuse in this way, or that we can keep a brain alive for long enough to move it to another body. And then there’s the issue of how to ensure the body doesn’t reject its new head.

[lawildcat]

Worked fine here!

 

 

 

[kygirl]

I think it's amazing that he would even attempt this kind of procedure. I loved this quote in the article-"We've seen several professors criticising Dr Canavero's work but you know, there was criticism for the first heart transplant as well and now it's commonplace."

[All Tell]

Worked fine here!

 

 

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Nope, the dog rejected Sarah Jessica Parker's head.