Surgeon claims to have carried out first human head transplant
Italian neuroscientist says procedure on corpse in China is step forward in quest for immortality
THE world’s first human head transplant has been carried out on a corpse in China in an 18-hour operation that showed it was possible to successfully reconnect the spine, nerves and blood vessels.
At a press conference in Vienna yesterday, Prof Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, announced that a team at Harbin Medical University had “realised the first human head transplant” and said an operation on a live human would take place “imminently”.
The operation was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren, who last year successfully grafted a head onto the body of a monkey.
Prof Canavero said: “The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage. And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.”
Prof Canavero shocked the world in 2015 when he said that he would be ready to transplant a human head within two years.
Although Valery Spiridonov, a Russian computer scientist who suffers spinal muscular atrophy, had volunteered to become the first head transplant patient, the team have since said the first trial is likely to be carried out on someone who is Chinese, because the chance of a Chinese donor body will be higher.
Prof Canavero said a “high number” of people had already volunteered for the transplant.
At the press conference, he said: “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 100 billion humans have died. That’s genocide on a mass scale.
“We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands. It will change everything. It will change you at every level. The first human head transplant, in the human mode, has been realised… Everyone said it was impossible. But the surgery was successful.”
British experts accused Prof Canavero of “egotistical pseudoscience” but the neuroscientist said details of the operation would be published in the journal Surgical Neurology International within days. The Telegraph has seen an early copy of the journal paper, which confirms that the first human head transplant has taken place on two men who donated their bodies to medical science.
Describing the surgery, Prof Canavero said the operation was split into
‘They called me crazy, a lunatic, Frankenstein. But Frankenstein was a very ethical man by the way’
two parts. In the first procedure, the blood supply of the donor body was attached to the brain of the recipient. Then the head was severed and the nerves and blood vessels attached to the new body using a biological glue known as PEG.
When carried out on a live person the team plans to apply electrical stimulation to encourage new nerve endings to form, before using virtual reality simulations to help the patient get used to their new body.
Prof Canavero said they would take great care to ensure the larynx nerves were not severed so that the patient would still speak with the same voice when they awoke.
“Undeniably this is huge,” he said. “We are wading into uncharted territory here. It’s like going to the Moon. Apollo 11 was successful, so was Apollo 12, but then look what happened with Apollo 13. They called me crazy, a lunatic, Frankenstein. But Frankenstein was a very ethical man by the way.”
Prof Canavero also announced plans to begin work on the first human brain transplants, which he claimed could lead to “immortality”. He said he envisaged a future where people could live forever by transplanting their brains into younger bodies, possibly cloned from themselves.
“The goal of China is to treat incurable medical conditions. My goal is life extension, because I believe ageing is a disease which must be treated.
“I call it hetero chronic parabiosis – the putting together of two people of a different age. Scientists have already shown the rejuvenating benefits of injecting people with young blood.
“If you had a young, new body, it would be able to wash the old brain with young blood, rejuvenating the brain repeatedly. You could potentially live forever.”
However the scientific community reacted to the news with scepticism, claiming that a head transplant operation could only be deemed a success after a paralysed human had survived the operation and recovered.
Dr James Fildes, NHS Principal Research Scientist at the Transplant Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester, dismissed the announcement as ‘egotistical pseudoscience.’
“Unless Canavero or Ren provide real evidence that they can perform a head, or more appropriately, a whole body transplant on a large animal that recovers sufficient function to improve quality of life, this entire project is morally wrong,” he said.
“Perhaps far more worryingly, this endeavour appears to revolve around immortality, but in each case a body is needed for the transplant, and therefore a human needs to die as part of the process.”