A resident of Vladimir Valery Spiridonov said that he was ready to become the first patient of the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero and undergo a head transplant operation. Valery has suffered from the incurable disease of Werdnig-Hoffman since childhood.
If at first it sounded like something vague and mostly with a desire to loudly declare oneself both from one side and from the other, now the real actions, amounts, terms and opportunities are becoming more and more clearly drawn. And now there is the date of the operation - December 2017.
Sergio Canavero, a former neurosurgeon from Turin, was interviewed by Libero Quotidiano and explained why he wants to participate in the risky experiment and how realistic these plans are.
As the journalist Alessandro Milan notes, "after a two-hour interview, it remains unclear whether you are facing a visionary who in two years will make a revolutionary breakthrough in medicine, or a person who is obsessed with an idea that was initially doomed to failure."
What do you say?
Sergio Canavero is aware of this and calmly accepts the most fierce criticism in his address. Most important to him is to perform the world's first head transplant to enable paralyzed people to walk again by giving them a new body. All the details of his revolutionary project in medicine, Canavero outlined in his book "Il cervello immortale" ("The brain is immortal") (edition of Sperling & Kupfer).
LQ: Professor, do you know that you are called the new Professor Frankenstein?
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SK: This is a great honor for me.
LQ: Really?
SK: Of course. This means that after 200 years we will finally be able to make a dream come true, and every time someone manages to turn a dream into reality is a huge success. Victor Frankenstein wanted to challenge nature itself, but when he realized the horror of what had happened, he tried to destroy the monster he had created. I also thought about the consequences of a human head transplant and looked for possible solutions to this problem. So it's a great honor for me to be compared to Frankenstein.
LQ: We'll come back to the solutions you found. When did you first think about a head transplant?
SK: As a child. When I was 8 years old, I watched the TV series "Medical Center", and they showed cerebral angiography. I was simply mesmerized. At the age of 15, I read a special issue of the magazine Scienze on the brain, and at 17, about the experiment of Dr. White, who in the United States performed a head transplant from one monkey to another. Then an insight came over me, and I decided to devote myself to medicine.
LQ: When did you start materializing your idea?
SK: In 1993, I came across articles written 30 years ago by the American neurosurgeon Freeman. He, too, was looking for his own treatments for paralysis. This convinced me that a human head transplant is very real.
LQ: When will the first human head transplant be performed?
S. K.: If everything goes as we planned, the world's first operation will be performed on Christmas 2017 in China.
LQ: Valery Spiridonov will be the first patient to receive a new body, as planned?
SK: No, the Chinese project does not provide for Valery's head transplant for obvious reasons. We cannot give him, who is white as snow, the body of a Chinese. At the moment, there are no patients ready for surgery yet.
LQ: Could you explain in general terms the essence of the operation?
SK: To begin with, a suitable patient is determined from an immunological and physical point of view. After a suitable donor has been found, you can proceed directly to the operation itself. The recipient and the donor are delivered to the operating room and placed on adjacent tables, at a distance of two meters. Two teams of surgeons work simultaneously. When everything is ready, both heads are cut off.
The donor's head is handed over to relatives for burial, and the recipient's head is transplanted onto a new body. However, his head must be frozen at 15 ° C before cutting. And only then transplanted.
(To cut the spinal cord, the surgeon will need a special knife that can work with an error of one millionth of a meter. Spiridonov's head will be temporarily frozen to prevent bleeding while the spinal cord sections are connected, and then attached to the new body. warn that connecting a person's head to a new body can lead to “hitherto unknown levels of insanity.” To prepare the patient for new sensations, a team of programmers has developed a virtual reality system.)
LQ: And how much will the operation cost?
SK: If we manage to carry out the operation in China, then its cost will be 15 million dollars. In Europe or the USA, the cost rises to 100 million.
LQ: Listen to you, this is a very common operation. But, as you probably know, many neurosurgeons say that it is impossible to connect the bone marrow of the recipient with the bone marrow of the donor. In Italy you are subjected to the most ruthless criticism.
SK: In Italy, they refused to conduct the operation, therefore, the opinion of the Italians does not matter to me. If you are uncomfortable here, they just kick you out. Professor Sarr of the Mayo Clinic, a leading specialist and a true professional, spoke positively about the possibility of transplantation and the technique I used.
LQ: Look, what happens if a patient dies after a head transplant?
SK: When Barnard performed his first heart transplant, his patient lived for only 18 days, the second for a year and a half. Every transplant has its share of risk. But before the operation, a very detailed plan is drawn up. In fact, the first head transplant will be performed by us two months before the operation in 2017 in China: we will conduct a trial head transplant on two brain-dead patients in order to hone our technique. This will serve as the final stage, becoming our Apollo 10 before landing on the moon in Apollo 11.
LQ: In terms of potential patients, who are they?
SK: Most of them are completely paralyzed people.
LQ: And can you guarantee that the head transplant will give them a chance to walk again?
S. K.: Yes. I will tell you one name: Christopher Reeve (American theater, film and television actor, director, screenwriter, public figure). He gained worldwide fame after playing the role of Superman in the 1978 American film of the same name and its sequels. On May 27, 1995, after falling from a horse during a race in Virginia, he broke his cervical vertebrae and was paralyzed. Doctors could not put the actor on his feet, but saved his life by performing a unique operation. He was paralyzed below the shoulders, could not breathe on his own, and could speak only with the help of an apparatus inserted into the trachea. Doctors connected an electrical stimulator to the actor's paralyzed diaphragm, which caused contractions of the main respiratory muscle. Since then, he has devoted his life to rehabilitation therapy and, together with his wife, opened a center for training paralyzed skills of independent existence. Died of a heart attack on October 10, 2004). If Reeve were alive, we would cut out his spinal cord without damaging it and using a special technique, and then "glue" him to the new body and Reeve could walk again.
LQ: You are very confident in your abilities.
S. K.: Okay, let's assume that something goes wrong and the paralyzed patient after the transplantation will not be able to walk. In this case, nothing is lost to science yet. When Edison was told, even before he managed to create his first light bulb, “you made 999 attempts and they all failed,” he replied, “It was not a failure. It was just 999 wrong ways to create a light bulb. In science, everything is achieved by trial and error.
LQ: Yes, but in that case you will create another paralyzed, even more crippled patient, with the body of one person and with the head of another person.
SK: I am 100% sure that he will be able to walk. When the Wright brothers built their first airplane, everyone said they were crazy.
LQ: Professor Canavero, what is your real purpose, why are you participating in the experiment?
SK: Until now, I have always answered that "for the treatment of serious pathologies." But I actually have deeper motives.
LQ: Which ones?
SK: I'll explain. At 30 I was a materialist, even a reductionist. I, like many others, believed in the idea that "the brain produces consciousness." In 1989, I saw the movie Flatliners starring Julia Roberts. In it, medical students stopped the work of their hearts with the intention of seeing the other world. It was a revelation for me. For many years I have dealt with clinical death, and I said to myself: "Of course it would be nice to do something like this."
Just imagine: the moment when the head of the recipient patient has already been removed, but not yet transplanted to a new body, is the moment of transition between life and death. With the help of a head transplant, I can not only cure incurable diseases, but also find out what happens after death, and thus solve the problem of consciousness.
LQ: I'm afraid I didn't quite understand you.
SK: I am convinced that consciousness is not generated by the brain, therefore, when a person dies, his consciousness continues to live. With a successful head transplant, I can prove this fact scientifically. Thus, two things will be achieved: a step towards "immortality" and a proof of the absolute uselessness of all religions.
LQ: The uselessness of religions?
SK: The main reason why we resort to religion is the fear of death. Religions, in order to reduce this fear, talk about the soul that goes to Paradise, and require proof of faith. I will prove that consciousness continues to live after physical death, but I will do it on a scientific basis. If the brain transplanted into a new body can "tell" us what it saw during the transition, we will have evidence that at the time of this temporary death, consciousness is present, even if the brain is not functioning. Consequently, the need for religion and faith will disappear to overcome the fear of death. In twenty years, all religions will disappear.
LQ: As I understand it, you don't believe in God?
SK: Yes, you are right, I am an atheist.
LQ: Aren't you afraid that your technology may end up falling into the wrong hands, and some modern "Hitler" can thus secure "immortality" for himself?
SK: This is an ethical dilemma that I have pondered a lot about. I can't let this happen. So I launched the Nuovo mondo (New World) project.
LQ: What is its essence?
SK: It is based on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Since I am against the death penalty and believe that prisons are not needed in modern society, the only way to stop a potential psychopath is to “reprogram” his brain. Society, in addition to caring for life extension through head transplantation, should think about controlling the brain of potential criminals using neurostimulation methods that I have been working on for many years. In my opinion, the only way to stop evil is to control human behavior in advance.
In fact, you don't need to think that these are just words. Sergio Canavero at the end of 2016 came one step closer to transplanting a human head. The doctor operated on the dog and mouse.
He did not completely separate the heads from the bodies, but only cut the spine. The specialist managed to restore thousands of damaged neurons using polyethylene glycol. It is a food additive used in milk production. The result stunned even the surgeon himself. Within seven days the dog began to get up on its paws, and after three weeks it was already running and feeling great. The mouse got better even faster.
Sergio Canavero, neurosurgeon: “After the operation, which was supposed to be fatal to animals, we see amazing results. The mouse recovered in 24 hours - with almost the entire set of neurophysiological functions. This is unprecedented. It's amazing, I would even call it a miracle."
However, many experts do not share Canavero's delight. Skeptics say the experiment needs to be done more thoroughly. But the surgeon himself is confident that he is on the way to a sensation.
Here's another opinion:
Academician Sergei Gauthier, Director of the Shumakov Federal Scientific Center for Transplantology and Artificial Organs, Chief Transplantologist of the Russian Federation:
The idea itself is attractive, as it makes it possible to preserve the human personality in various disasters, serious diseases of the body, which doom a person to death. It seems to me that if you carefully think over the course of the operation, all its details and nuances, calculate the possible risks, then it is technically feasible. In the mid-1950s, our great compatriot Vladimir Demikhov proved in experiments on dogs that a head transplant is practically possible. He proved the possibility of restoring blood circulation in the brain in the transplanted head, maintaining the vitality of the brain.