The whole world has spread the message that the paralyzed Russian programmer will become the first person whose head will be sewn onto someone else's body. What seemed incredible fantasy yesterday (for example, described in the novel by Alexander Belyaev "The Head of Professor Dowell") may become reality tomorrow. However, few people think about the spiritual aspects of such an operation …
Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has chosen a person to whom a foreign body will be transplanted for the first time in the world. The choice of the doctor fell on the Russian, 30-year-old Valery Spiridonov, a programmer from Vladimir, who suffers from severe muscular atrophy, which forever confined him to a wheelchair.
According to the computer scientist, he decided to take a desperate step, because he wants to use the chance to find a new body before dying. “Am I afraid? Of course I'm afraid. But this is not so much scary as it is very interesting, - said Spiridonov in an interview with the Daily Mail - However, you have to understand that I do not have many options. If I miss this chance, my fate will be unenviable. Every new year worsens my condition."
It is known that while the doctor and his future patient had not yet met, Canavero did not study Spiridonov's medical history and they only communicated via Skype.
It is reported that the 36-hour operation will cost more than $ 11 million, the donor body is planned to be taken from a healthy person whose brain has died. The success of the operation should ensure the simultaneous separation of the heads from the body of Spiridonov and the donor, while it is assumed that after the operation Spiridonov will be put into a four-week coma so that the neck muscles do not move, then immunosuppressants will be injected abundantly to prevent tissue rejection.
The operation may take place as early as 2016. Details are planned to be revealed at an upcoming conference of neurosurgeons in Annapolis this summer, in which the doctor and his future patient are going to participate.
The first experiments on head transplantation were carried out back in 1954 by the Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov, who successfully transplanted the second heads to several dogs. A head transplant operation was performed in the United States on a monkey back in 1970 by neurosurgeon Robert Joseph White. At that time, there were no techniques that would allow to qualitatively connect the spinal cord to the brain, so the monkey was paralyzed and died eight days later. Experiments on the same head transplant in mice have recently been carried out in China.
It is not the first time that Canavero's plans to transplant someone else's body have been spoken about. Earlier, Canavero stated that his group's experiments with rats made it possible to reconnect the spinal cord to another head. In order for the "new" head to work, the surgeons need to be able to "weld" the cut axons. These are long outgrowths of neurons, they are also wires that connect neurons to each other, transmit information between nerve cells, as well as signals to muscles and glands.
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The doctor claims that truncated axons can be repaired using molecules such as polyethylene glycol, which is widely used in pharmaceuticals, or chitosan, a biopolymer isolated from crustacean shells.
The main role in the operation is assigned to the "ultra-sharp scalpel", which will cut off the spinal cord. Canavero calls this moment the key in the entire operation, the axons will inevitably be damaged during its course, but they must be given the opportunity to recover.
Canavero suggests that in the event of a successful outcome of the operation, the patient will be able to move, speak in the same voice and feel his own face. And physiotherapy will get him to his feet in a year.
“If transplantation is carried out under deep hypothermia (15 ° C), so as not to damage the structure of the brain itself, and if we try to develop a technique for the introduction of substances that promote regeneration after the conditionally called“binding”of nerve endings, then the surgical knife will be subject to what the Heavenly Office usually does. , - the world press quotes Sergio.
The Italian neurosurgeon said that within a couple of years, a human head transplant will become a completely ordinary thing.
The medical community has a very controversial attitude towards Canavero, and many doctors compare him to Frankenstein.
The Catholic Church opposes the dissection of a human corpse - it is believed that after the Second Coming, people will return to their bodies. However, this theory is not supported by the modern Vatican.
The most interesting is the look at the forthcoming operation from an esoteric point of view.
The head can be alive separately from the body. Consciousness will remain the same, i.e. the same person, soul. The soul does not come into contact with the physical body in any way, but floats in five subtle-energy pranic currents.
If we consider the specific case of a head transplant to a new body - whose subtle body will be stronger (the one that will be transferred with the head, or the one that was in the body), that soul will occupy this body after the head transplant. If no subtle body is transferred with the head, then the soul that already exists will remain.
The fate of such a person, if he does not practice yoga or spiritual meditation, is unenviable. Most likely, he will be visited by obsessions, since part of his karma will be received from another person …
What will be the consequences for all mankind - if such operations become the norm - one can only guess …
