National Post

‘What is going to happen if I do nothing?’

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It’s considerab­ly cheaper, and less tricky technicall­y to freeze just a head, rather than an entire body. “And, in order to give them a new life, you have to give them a new body, and a new body means HEAVEN. There will be no other way.”

It’s statements like these that make his critics apoplectic. He is the first to acknowledg­e he’s been denounced as huckster, phoney and crazy as a bat.

Then there’s the matter of Spiridonov. Aside from the Frankenste­in factor, the procedure’s critics argue Spiridonov could end up demented. Or dead.

There is not nearly enough data to support moving into humans, they argue, and even if Spiridonov survives surgery, there’s no basis for the suppositio­n that his transplant­ed head — and brain — will retain his mind, personalit­y or consciousn­ess once it’s hooked up to its new body.

Modern cognitive science suggests the body plays a key role in the developmen­t of the human “self.” In other words, as the New Scientist recently asked, “Who knows whether the person who comes out of the operating room would be the same as the one who went in?”

Canavero admits his plan raises sticky social and bioethical issues. Is the seat of “self ” in the head — the brain — or in the flesh and blood? Would Spiridonov be getting a new body, or would the body be getting a new head? Writing in The Conversati­on, philosophe­r Quassim Cassam says, “The person with Spiridonov’s head and someone else’s body would be mentally continuous with Spiridonov, and so would be him.”

Canavero, too, has said his “chimera” would carry the mind of the recipient. However, because the gonads (testis or ovary) belong to the body donor, should the new “being” reproduce, any children would carry the genetic inheritanc­e of the donor.

If anything, Canavero sees this as further justificat­ion for pushing ahead, because it would mean the emergence of “life from death.”

Renowned bioethicis­t Arthur Caplan has assailed Canavero’s “noggin exchange program” as scientific­ally “rotten” and ethically “lousy.”

Put aside that doctors have never succeeded in rewiring a human spinal cord, said Caplan, head of the division of bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, where the most extensive face transplant ever was performed on severely burned Mississipp­i firefighte­r Patrick Hardison a year ago. “What’s his rehab plan? You can’t just put a head on somebody and say, ‘oh, look! It stayed on! We’re out of here.’ ”

Caplan and others argue there is every chance of a mismatch between the neurochemi­stry of Spiridonov’s brain, and the nervous system of his new body. It’s not like screwing a light bulb into someone else’s socket, he argued. “The mechanical­s and nerve impulses are going to be different, and I would predict ( result in) severe dementia.”

He also wonders, what’s Canavero’s exit strategy should Spiridonov wind up severely mentally disabled in a body that doesn’t move. “Are you going to kill the patient? Are you going to overdose him?”

Nobody can deny that it is risky, Canavero admits. He said Spiridonov remains “absolutely committed” to surgery. “Here you have a patient who is dying, dying, dying, every single day. What is going to happen if I do nothing?”

And he is unrepentan­t. He said our sense of self is an illusion that can be manipulate­d at will. He notes every medical and scientific marvel — the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967, the first test- tube baby in 1978 — was initially greeted with moral outrage. French chemist Louis Pasteur was ridiculed when he proposed microbes could generate disease. “It is standard issue criticism you get all along.”

None of us should have to accept death as a “natural outcome,” he has argued. “In the beginning, it will be like saving people like Einstein — intellectu­ally, high-ranking guys who really can give us more. I mean, Stephen Hawking? Everybody in Britain said, ‘what about Stephen Hawking? Would you save him?’ I said, ‘ why not?’ But this is not for me to decide. It’s for you, for society. I’m just a man. I’m a technician. What to do with this, that’s up to you.”

Canavero draws parallels to the ethical drubbing Robert White faced in 1970, when t he pipe- smoking American neurosurge­on succeeded in transferri­ng the head of one monkey onto the body of another. The monkey, whose spine was severed at the neck, could still hear, smell and follow objects with its eyes. It lived eight days.

Colleagues at Case Western Reverse called the experiment­s barbaric. Still, before he died in 2010, White predicted that “what has always been the stuff of science fiction — the Frankenste­in legend, in which an entire human being is constructe­d by sewing various body parts together — will become clinical reality in the 21st century.”

Canavero, who is in contact with White’s granddaugh­ter Samantha, claimed to have received more than 1,000 requests from surgeons worldwide, including from Canada, volunteeri­ng to participat­e in HEAVEN, and said he’s now shopping for a suitable venue. “Right now, I can tell you that I’m working hard on several people who might want to see this happen in their own country.”

“It’s no longer only about me. It’s no longer ‘ loony Sergio.’ Now, we are many loonies around the world working on this.”

He sees the first transplant as a learning experience. When South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first humanto- human heart transplant in 1967, the patient died after 18 days. The second patient lived 18 months.

He hinted the first headbody swap could occur in the United States. “It might, it might. I can’t tell you anything that is solid enough to publish, and there are people involved right now who don’t want to be made known publicly.”

In the meantime, he’s pitching his plans, working the West, and attending medical conference­s, like l ast month’s meeting of brain scientists in Glasgow, where Canavero unveiled the super- sharp, diamond- cut surgical blade and virtualrea­lity system he plans to use. He’s reading his comic books. Even today, he’s a big fan. “They open your mind,” he said. “You think, ‘ hey, this man is flying! This man is doing stuff.’ But, is it really so impossible?”

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