Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has announced his plan to carry out the first human head transplant in 2017, New Scientist reports. The scientist presented his project at the conference of the American Academy of Orthopedic and Neurological Surgeons (AANOS), which takes place in Maryland (USA).
Head transplant operations are primarily aimed at patients diagnosed with cancer, paralytics, motor neuron diseases (for example, Stephen Hawking).
Canavero's method builds on existing scientific achievements. A head transplant on the body of another monkey was carried out already in the 1970s: the monkey lived with a new head for nine days, but its immune system rejected the foreign organs.
The Turin surgeon plans to carry out the operation in London. The donor of the new body will be a person who is in a state of brain death. After cooling the bodies of the recipient and the donor with a very sharp knife, two heads are separated from the spine - simultaneously.
Then the ends of the spinal cord are glued together with polyethylene glycol, and the patient remains in a coma for about four weeks so that the blood vessels and muscles do not move while the head adapts to the new body. It is expected that after coming out of a coma, a person will be able to move, feel their face and even speak in an “old” voice.
Operation Canavero, however, will pose serious medical ethics challenges. For example, the biological father of the children of the recipient of the new body will be the donor, since the sperm (or eggs) belong to him. Nevertheless, the surgeon hopes that in the near future, cloning technologies will allow the aging inhabitants of the planet to grow a new healthy body from their own DNA.