Head transplant performed on corpse: doctor
Procedure has never been done successfully
A maverick Italian surgeon who plans to perform the world’s first head — or, more accurately, body swap — says his collaborators have carried out a head transplant on a human corpse.
Sergio Canavero announced at a press conference in Vienna that a surgical team in China, led by Dr. Xiaoping Ren, who last year carried out a head transplant on a monkey, had succeeded in transferring a head from one cadaver and connecting it to the body of another by fusing the spine, nerves and blood vessels, according to press reports.
“The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done,” Canavero said, according to The Tele- graph. “A full head swap between brain- dead organ donors is the next stage,” he said, adding that an operation on a live human being will take place “imminently.”
According to The Daily Mail, Canavero told the press: “For too long nature has dictated her rules to us.
“We’re born, we grow, we age and we die. For millions of years humans have evolved and 110 billion humans have died in the process. That’s genocide on a mass scale.
“We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands.”
The 18- hour procedure is said to have taken place at the Harbin Medical University. Canavero made the surprise announcement at a launch for his book, Medicus Magnus — the Revolution in Medicine and How We Utilize It.
“Today, we stand on the brink of a revolution, not only in medicine but in human life as well,” Canavero said.
In April, Canavero and Ren published a ghoulish account of experiments that involved transplanting the heads of small donor rats onto the back of the neck of bigger, recipient rats. Fourteen of the freakish pairings survived for an average of 36 hours.
Reporting in the journal CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, Canavero said a special pump and tubes were used throughout the rat surgeries to ensure adequate blood supply to the donor’s brain, until the head could be connected to the recipient. “The whole operation process preserves the carotid arteries, jugular veins and vertebral arteries,” they reported.
The audacious surgeon is the creator of HEAVEN, the “head anastomosis venture” project. The plan would see two teams of surgeons, working together swiftly, lop off the heads of two men — one, the “recipient,” the other, the “donor,” an accident victim, for example, whose brain is dead but whose body is otherwise healthy. They would then shift the recipient’s head onto the donor body using a custom-made swivel crane, reconnect and stitch up the trachea, esophagus, the carotid arteries and jugular veins, link up the spinal cords and wait for the recipient to reawaken, and — most importantly — move.
Bio- ethicists have accused the “noggin exchange” surgeon of being reckless. Transplant surgeons say nobody has been able to repair a spinal cord that has been cut clean through.
As well, even if the person survives, there’s no basis for the supposition that the transplanted head will retain the person’s mind, personality or consciousness once it’s hooked up to its new body.