First head transplants ‘in 10 years’

The world’s first human head transplants may be just a decade away, a former NHS neurosurgeon has claimed.

Bruce Mathew, a former clinical lead for neurosurgery at Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, now specialises in hyperbaric medicine, helping divers recover from the bends.

But while working on a science fiction novel, Chrysalis, with Michael J Lee, the futurist author, he realised there was a plausible way to move the consciousness of one person to another body, and that recent advancements in robotics, stem cell transplants and nerve surgery make the prospect achievable within the next decade.

Professor Sergio Canavero is also working on the first head transplant, involving severing the head from the spinal column and reattaching it to a donor body.

But Mathew believes it would be more effective to take the whole head and spinal cord as a single entity, and replace it in a donor body.

He said: ‘‘Initially our intention was to just brainstorm an idea and it seemed rather silly, but then I realised, it actually isn’t.

‘‘If you transplant the brain, and keep the brain and spinal cord together, it’s actually not impossible.

‘‘The idea that you split the spinal cord is utterly ridiculous. The thought of keeping it one piece has always been daunting, but with modern technology you can do most things.

‘‘At the moment, you can connect one or two nerves, but with robotics and artificial intelligence, we’ll soon be able to do 200 nerves.

‘‘You would take off the spinal column, so that you could drop in the whole brain and spinal cord and lumbar sacral into a new body. It’s very difficult to take out the dura [the protective membrane of the spinal cord] intact without making a hole in it. It will take a number of advancements, but it will probably will happen in the next 10 years.’’

Mathew admitted that his approach would be useless for people who had spinal cord injuries, but he said it could be helpful for diseases such as muscular dystrophy or for amputees, and could even one day be used to bring back people who have been cryogenically preserved.

Regulation and ethical objections are likely to stop even the initial experiments on animals in the West, but less scrupulous regimes, such as China, may soon be ready to attempt to transplant consciousness into a new body. In 2017, Canavero announced he had performed a head transplant on a corpse in an operation which connected the spine, nerves and blood vessels of two people.

The 18-hour operation was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren, of Harbin Medical University, China, who the previous year had successfully grafted a head onto the body of a monkey and their collaboration is currently ongoing.

Although Mathew believes Canavero’s approach will not work, he claimed his method will not only allow a consciousness to be passed to another human, but one day to a robotic body.

He admitted there would be issues as to whether the head and spine could fully integrate with so much DNA from another person, but he said: ‘‘You would take on the DNA of the brain and spinal cord, like a bone marrow donor, and you would get rid of donor DNA, then colonise it with that from the person receiving the body.’’

Lee added: ‘‘Our story presents a medically coherent, plausible method of transplanting the head and central nervous system.

‘‘For people with degenerative muscle diseases, head transplants of this kind would create the possibility of getting a new body.’’

– Telegraph Group