The very idea of a head transplant, as they say, was in the air. For example, a lot of films have been filmed where the human soul moved to another body or the miracles of surgery were demonstrated (the same "Heart of a Dog"). Again, let's recall the famous Dr. Frankenstein, who turned inanimate matter into living matter.
Therefore, today the operation to transplant a head to another body does not seem so utopian. After all, doctors successfully transplant the heart, liver, lungs, limbs - this is already, one might say, a common thing.
FRANKENSTEIN'S HERES
It is clear that the surgeon who performs such an operation will forever go down in the history of medicine: successfully transplanting a head is a qualitatively different level of professionalism! And attempts to get closer to solving this super task were undertaken back in the middle of the last century. Thus, the founder of transplantology, Professor Vladimir Demikhov, in 1946, being a young 30-year-old scientist, for the first time in the world performed a heart transplant in a dog, and then the entire heart-lung complex.
Then in 1954 he performed a head and forelimb transplant from a puppy to the neck of an adult dog. Both heads were viable! For fifteen years, the scientist created 20 two-headed dogs, but their maximum life span was about a month, since tissue rejection occurred.
At the same time, despite world recognition, Demikhov, due to undercover intrigues, remained … a junior researcher without a scientific degree. Only in 1963, after defending his thesis at a meeting of the Academic Council of Moscow State University, he first became a candidate, and an hour and a half after the second vote - a doctor of biological sciences.
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The following fact is also noteworthy: in 1960 and 1963, Christian Barnard, a cardiac surgeon from Cape Town (South Africa), came to Moscow to Vladimir Demikhov for an internship. On December 3, 1967, he performed the world's first human heart transplant. The first person he called immediately after the end of this operation was Demikhov: he thanked him and asked for permission to publicly name his teacher.
The fact is that Barnard assisted Vladimir Petrovich semi-secretly - without obtaining official permission, arriving in Moscow as a tourist … By the way, the famous cardiac surgeon Michael DeBakey also trained with Demikhov - the same one who performed coronary artery bypass grafting on Boris Yeltsin in 1996 …
Then in 1970, American surgeon Robert White took another step forward: he transplanted the head of one monkey to another. The animal with a "new face" lived for nine days. However, it should be noted that the spinal cord was not attached - this cannot be called a full life.
THE WIZARD OF TURIN
There have been no attempts to perform a similar operation on a person, so a real information bomb exploded in the summer of 2013. Sergio Canavero, an Italian doctor from Turin, said he would be able to perform a human head transplant in two years. This will be possible thanks to the neurosurgical method developed by him for connecting the brain with the spinal cord.
After all, this was the main problem of his predecessors: they learned to start the circulatory system a long time ago, but the nervous one was not given - the work turned out to be too precious. Now, according to Dr. Canavero, the necessary instruments have appeared - the cut of the nerve tissues of the donor and the patient can be made very accurately.
The postoperative restoration of the spinal cord is planned to be carried out not only with the help of drugs, but also with plastic (for large vessels) and polyethylene glycol (as bio-glue) - these materials have successfully proven themselves in dogs.
In addition, for the recovery period, Canavero suggests putting the patient into an artificial coma for 3-4 weeks. In this case, he will be immobilized - it will be better to engraft damaged nerve cells, muscles and blood vessels. According to the forecast of the Italian neurosurgeon, the operated person will be able to speak immediately after coming out of the coma, and will learn to walk again in about a year.
What is the practical effect of such an operation? Whom can she help? First of all, paralyzed people and patients with muscular dystrophy, cancer patients. That is, to those who have a completely healthy head, but their body is "junk".
There was also a volunteer who was ready to lie on the operating table for Sergio Canavero. This is our compatriot Valery S. from Vladimir. Since childhood, he has an incurable disease - Werdnig-Hoffmann spinal muscular atrophy: the muscles of the body gradually weaken, and complete immobility sets in.
At the same time, Valery's mental development is all right: he graduated from school with a gold medal, then university. But even now a 30-year-old programmer cannot lift a thing heavier than 200 grams. Canavero maintains contact with Valerie and considers him the first candidate for surgery.
SLOW ACTION MINES
There are, of course, enough skeptics - there are reasons. Firstly, the operation itself is extremely complex purely technologically. In addition to a whole arsenal of modern equipment and instruments, the operation will require a well-coordinated team of doctors and nurses - this is continuous teamwork for about 36 hours.
Secondly, both for the head, the body of another person, and for the body, the “alien” head is a genetically foreign tissue, and one has to deal with an immunological barrier. That is, a reaction of rejection is possible. Moreover, in the combined parts from two organisms, it can proceed independently of each other.
Since the Second World War, immunologists and surgeons have been jointly solving this problem. But even with all the successes achieved, physicians have to take into account that nature has its own barrier to transplantation - each person has innate individual characteristics of histocompatibility, and it is almost impossible to take everything into account.
Moreover, the more significant the genetic differences between the transplant and the recipient, the more pronounced the rejection reaction. Hope for special drugs - immunosuppressants, which can significantly reduce the risk of rejection.
In short, there are "mines" of delayed action, so not all of Sergio Canavero's colleagues share his optimism. Although, it is quite possible that there are those who are already thinking about the commercial side of such operations, if they are put on stream. There will obviously be businessmen from medicine, but so far the main thing is to learn how to guarantee the result. In any case, the neurosurgeon from Turin will probably be able to find the necessary $ 11 million for the first operation.
In conclusion, it is worth recalling that two years ago Sergio Canavero already set a possible date for the head transplant operation - 2015. Now he has postponed it for 2017. What is it: the desire to once again draw attention to your person or the desire to act for sure? We'll find out very soon. If only Valery S. could wait for his second birth …
Nikolay Zenitsa