The surgeon refused the Russian head transplant patient. Headless patient When will the human head transplant operation take place?
In November 2017, it was announced that in China, a team from Harbin Medical University, led by Sergio Canavero, had successfully completed the world's first dead human head transplant on a cadaver. The transplant operation lasted 18 hours, the doctors managed to successfully connect the spine, nerves and blood vessels.
"A huge step towards transplanting a head into a living person!" — when last week the Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero made a statement about the success of scientists from Harbin Medical University, many became to speculate when exactly neurosurgeons will perform the unique operation that has been talked about for so long. But now the Chinese themselves have taken the floor. They recalled that they worked with corpses, and for the time being, one should not attribute a breakthrough in transplantation to them, no matter what Professor Canavero says about it.
May 21, 1908 to the American physiologist Charles Claude Guthrie for the first time in the world succeeded transplant the head of one dog onto the body of another. Guthrie connected the arteries in such a way that the blood of the whole dog would flow over the head of the decapitated dog, and then return and go through the head of the whole dog. Guthrie's book Vascular Surgery and Its Applications contains a photograph of this two-headed dog. The second head was sewn to the base of the neck of the whole dog, and it was located upside down, jaw up. From the moment of decapitation to the restoration of blood circulation in the head, 20 minutes passed. Guthrie recorded some of the primitive movements and reflexes of the sewn-on head: constriction of the pupils, twitching of the nostrils, and movement of the tongue.
And now let me clarify (yyyy), are we talking about the working moment of the operation or the process of retraining from the open method to the lapara? Would you still remember the 2nd course of the medical faculty where they dissect frog physiology ... In short, the answer is not defended ...?
Who has had a head transplant. Fresh stuff.
Despite Canavero's claims, a number of scientists express doubts that the success of the operation is possible. Renowned neurosurgeons believe that biochemical differences between donor and recipient can lead to unpredictable consequences.
Canavero has been criticized by major medical experts precisely on ethical grounds.
Here the joke is that this Italian comrade has not fucking shown yet that he has achieved something more than his colleagues 100 years ago. A successful monkey head transplant is when the monkey is alive - healthy for several years, still jumping cheerfully through palm trees, cracking bananas and fucking other monkeys. And she was euthanized after 20 hours, and it’s not fucking certain that she could at least breathe on her own without the apparatus. To solve one big problem - head transplantation - it is necessary to solve several important smaller problems - for example, the same splicing of neurons in bulk, and removing the issue of rejection by the immune system (which is responsible for the bone marrow) of the head as a foreign object. The decision of each of them could bring a Nobel surgeon, but something is not on the list of candidates.
The operation was performed by a team from Harbin Medical University (China) led by Dr. Ren Xiaoping. According to Canavero, head transplant a living person will pass soon.
As Canavero explained, the Harbin Medical University team "performed the first head transplant." “The first head transplant on a human corpse has been performed. A complete transplant from a brain-dead donor will be the next step,” Canavero was quoted by The Telegraph as saying.
The neurosurgeon presented the rationale for his project at the TEDx conference. He also wrote the book Head Transplantation: and the Quest for Immortality to cover the cost of the operation. A 30-year-old programmer from Vladimir, Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, volunteered for a head transplant. The operation was scheduled for December 2017. In experiments on head transplantation, the well-known development of the Soviet professor Felix Beloyartsev is used - the blood substitute Perftoran, known under the name "Blue Blood".
But it's not bad. Let's get the remake going. An old story in a new way:
“... Six months after the replacement of the body, I suffered from insomnia ... suffered from insomnia ... suffered from insomnia ... At the same time, everything becomes unreal, looms somewhere in the distance. All just clones… clones… clones…”
“- I leafed through the catalogs, wondering: which limb replacement can serve as a characteristic of my personality?”
"People ask me all the time if I knew Durden's donor."
“- Hey, listen, I'm suffering!
if I'm not mistaken, they plan to put a person in an artificial coma for months, then a long period of rehabilitation and observation. apparently, putting a monkey in a coma was not part of the plans, they demonstrated the technique, key points, and promoted. suspicious, of course, but if the operation is successful, the boom effect will be akin to the invention of a stone ax, a wheel or the Internet.
Head transplant in China. All latest information as of 01/06/2018
What has been achieved in the animal model - prolonged hypothermic preservation and head transplantation - is fully feasible in the human realm. If such impressive procedures are ever to be justified in the human environment, then it is necessary to wait not only for the advancement of medical science, but for a more appropriate moral and social justification for such procedural undertakings ... what has always belonged to science fiction - the legend of Frankenstein, in which the whole human being was made up of body parts sewn together - will become a clinical reality at the beginning of the 21st century ... a brain transplant, at least at first, will actually be a head transplant - or a body transplant, depending on your point of view ... along with Considerable improvements in surgical techniques and management of the postoperative period may already be considered to adapt head transplant techniques to humans.
Recall that Sergio Canavero gained fame after his statements about the development of a method for transplanting a human head and the preparation of the first such operation in history. According to his plans, the procedure should take place in December of this year, but the exact date and place of its holding has not yet been appointed.
Pravda.Ru previously wrote that in January last year, a unique operation was performed in China to transplant the head of a monkey, held Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero and his Chinese colleague Ren Xiaoting. The animal lived for 20 hours, after which it was euthanized.
Mmmm ... let me clarify ... during laparoscopic removal of the appendix, two - three (less often four) punctures of the abdominal wall are made. But the tubes are inserted there “if something went wrong ..” or peritonitis has already begun initially and the intestines must be washed.
In November at Harbin University, the Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero and a group of Chinese neurosurgeons performed an operation to transplant the head of a deceased person onto the dead body of another. Canavero stated that he was able to successfully restore the spine, nerves and blood vessels. However, its Chinese counterpart Ren Xiaoping a little later he stated that he did not consider this procedure an operation as such. In his opinion, this should be considered as a model of a real surgical intervention.
About whether it is realistic to transplant a human head, AiF.ru was told by the chief transplantologist of the Ministry of Health of Russia, the head of the Federal State Institution "FNTS of Transplantology and Artificial Organs named after academician V. I. Shumakov", Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Medical Sciences Sergey Gauthier.
“In principle, it is technically possible to do this. You can do so to keep the activity of the brain. But the restoration of the correct nervous regulation of the donor body with the help of this brain raises very serious doubts. It is necessary to properly restore the pathways of the spinal cord, which will be cut by the surgeon and subsequently fused, glued or sewn. Nobody has done this yet, and there are no reasonable assumptions for this. I know that the Canavero group has its own view on these things and promises success. A very substantiated experimental confirmation of the possibilities for such an operation is needed. The first operation in China serves as a kind of textbook for further development of the technique. Such developments are hardly carried out in our country, I do not know about them. We have a lot of other problems that we need to solve, in addition to sewing on the head, ”the expert said.
The main goal of the head transplant operation is to enable the immobilized person to walk again, according to the Deputy Chief Transplantologist of St. Petersburg, Head of the Experimental Surgery Laboratory of the Research Center of the First St. Petersburg State Medical University named after academician I. P. Pavlov Dmitry Suslov “Suppose they sew the vessels, the blood from the head to the body will flow and flow through them. That is not the function of the head. The body that will be sewn to this head will not move. Questions of regeneration of the spinal cord are still open. There are no successful experiments on animals. Because the first indication that we were able to solve the issue of regeneration of nerve tissues of such a complex structure as the spinal cord would be the successful treatment of patients with spinal injuries. Which, unfortunately, is not yet, ”he told AiF.ru.
The expert is sure that the Canavero group makes loud statements for PR purposes. “On this occasion, I can say this: it would be better if you (journalists - approx. AiF.ru) promoted them less. These people have risen so well on this. They just make big statements. This is a way to attract attention and, accordingly, big money,” Suslov said.
“In our country, they are not working on a head transplant, we are working on the treatment of spinal injuries. Scientists study the spinal cord, but without such a pomp, they don’t shout: “We are transplanting a head!” Sergey Bryukhonenko at the beginning of the 20th century, he revived the head of a dog, then nothing came of it. Many others have done similar experiments, but nothing has come of it. The issue of spinal injury treatment is a Nobel Prize if this problem can be solved,” the expert said.
A group of researchers on the successful restoration of motor function in animals with a cut spinal cord. Among the authors of the publication is Sergio Canavero, the same Italian neurosurgeon who has been promising for many years to transplant a human head onto a donor's body. About the history of this project and how to relate to the promises of Canavero, at the request N+1 says Peter Talantov, author of the recently published book “0.05. Evidence-based medicine from magic to the search for immortality.
Head transplantation is a favorite subject of science fiction films and science news sections. And it's not just the incredible technical complexity of the transplant. On the one hand, the thought of living with someone else's body excites the imagination, touches on the sense of identity and makes us think about who we are. On the other hand, it opens the door to immortality. If we ever learn to discard bodies like worn-out clothes, old age and death can no longer be feared.
All this dooms any news about a head transplant to heated discussion. For some time now, the main newsmaker of transplantology has been Sergio Canavero, who has been promising for years to write his name in the history of surgery with this operation. If you take his word for it, all the necessary technologies have been created and the only thing is to assemble a team of experienced surgeons and find a lot of money. But the deadlines once named by Canavero have passed, and even the first potential patient managed to change his mind. Perhaps it is true, as skeptics (and most of them) say, that we are still too far from planning such an operation in earnest?
Any organ transplant operation requires the solution of several problems at once, each of which, if not eliminated, will lead to failure. In the case of a head transplant, protecting the brain from ischemia (reduced blood circulation) is critical - even a few minutes of ischemia will lead to irreversible changes in the brain and the death of the recipient's personality. Apparently, this is why the first attempts to transplant a dog's head onto a donor body at the beginning of the 20th century were unsuccessful.
Restore blood supply
Attempts to maintain life in a head separated from the body were made by our compatriot Sergei Bryukhonenko. In the 1930s, while working at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy, he created one of the first heart-lung machines, called an autojet. In a twenty minute film "Experiments to revive the body" shows a dog's head separated from the body. She is attached to the apparatus and remains alive - she reacts to tickling with a feather, blinks and licks her lips. The voice-over says that the head connected to the autojector remains in this state for many hours. However, later witnesses admitted that it was only possible to maintain the dog's heads in this state for only a few minutes. And the famous scene from the film is now considered a falsification.
Bryukhonenko's experiments inspired the surgeon Vladimir Demikhov to even more daring experiments. He transplanted the upper body - head and front legs - of puppies onto the body of larger dogs. Demikhov's method made it possible to carry out the operation without ischemia threatening death of the brain. The animals survived for up to twenty-nine days while moving, responding to stimuli and drinking water. But Demikhov remained in history not so much because of this strange experiment, but because he was the first in the world to transplant a heart, lungs and liver from one animal to another. Thanks to his developments in 1967, a successful heart transplant from person to person became possible. The surgeon Christian Barnard, who made it, repeatedly came to Demikhov's laboratory and subsequently called him his teacher.
Scheme of dog head transplantation according to Vladimir Demikhov's technology
Vladimir Demikhov (right) during the operation
Animal after transplantation of the head of a living dog to another dog
Demikhov's dogs died from an immune process called transplant rejection. In the absence of effective immune suppression technologies, this outcome was inevitable. In a head transplant, the reaction of rejection can be directed both to the donor body and, more likely, to the head of the recipient. Even now, despite immune-suppressing drugs, acute rejection occurs after 10-30 percent of liver and kidney transplants. And if kidney rejection leaves the patient a chance to wait for a new donor organ on an artificial kidney, then head rejection certainly threatens death.
Suppress rejection
The methods of immune suppression that appeared in the middle of the 20th century contributed to the relative success of the experiments of the American neurosurgeon Robert White. He took on an even more difficult task: transplanting the isolated brain of one dog into the skull of another. Six operations were relatively successful: the nervous systems of the donor brain and the recipient's body were not connected, but the brain was efficiently supplied with blood - this was confirmed by sufficient electrical and metabolic activity, after the operation the animals lived up to two days.
Subsequently, White transplanted monkey heads: a few hours after the operation, they could chew, swallow food, bite and follow moving objects with their eyes. However, they did not live long: the blood supply was still not efficient enough. Although hyperacute rejection of the transplanted heads was averted, White achieved it with such high doses of immune-suppressing substances that they themselves contributed to the death of the animals.
Over time, White planned to move on to human operations, trained on corpses in the morgue and dreamed of transplanting the head of Stephen Hawking onto a donor body. Fortunately for the latter, he was not interested in this opportunity and outlived White by eight years.
A-B - four mice of different colors before a head transplant operation using the technology of the surgeon Ren Xiaoping; C-D: white mouse with black head and vice versa; E - a black mouse with a gray head
A - vessels for blood transfusion; B - mice before surgery (from left to right: blood source, donor, recipient); C - mouse - blood source and mouse donor; D-E - mice after transplantation
Dr. Xiaoping Ren et al. / CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics
The Chinese surgeon Ren Xiaoping was able to achieve a greater life expectancy of animals. He changed the operating protocol, maintaining sufficient blood pressure in the vessels of the recipient's head throughout the operation. In 2015, he reported hundreds of transplanted mouse heads, half of the animals survived more than 24 hours after the operation, with a maximum survival of up to six months.
Ren also suggested changing the level at which the head was separated from the body. He suggested that the incision be made high enough so that the brainstem with the centers for regulating respiration and blood circulation remained on the donor body, which as a result would be able to breathe and be supplied with blood on its own without the help of life support devices.
Operation on a person
Around the same time, Sergio Canavero appears on the scene. A previously little-known Italian neurosurgeon said that he could solve the main problem of a head transplant - to restore the integrity of the spinal cord. So far, all attempts to fuse the spinal cord after the incision have been unsuccessful. There are several areas in which research is underway, but they are all at an early stage.
Attempts are being made to stimulate the regeneration of neurons with the help of electrical impulses, to use stem cells. Experiments with computer interfaces are interesting: one device reads brain signals and transmits it to another, located below the site of damage to the spinal cord, which decodes them and transmits them to motor neurons. While all of these technologies sound promising, no case has so far been fully successful, even in animal experiments. Moreover, we are not talking about results suitable for people: there are thousands of patients with spinal cord injuries in the world, and if there is an effective technique, it will definitely be studied on someone long before head transplant operations.
Canavero named his technology GEMINI. It consists in a very precise and thin section of the spinal cord and the use of polyethylene glycol as a substance that "glues" breaks in the membranes of neurons. Canavero said that all the technologies necessary for a successful head transplant have already been created and he will perform the operation on a human in the very near future. According to his estimates, it was supposed to cost about 15 million euros, last more than 36 hours and take place with the participation of 150 doctors.
Soon the first patient appeared. Canavero announced that no later than 2017 he would transplant the head of 33-year-old Russian IT specialist Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, a rare hereditary disease accompanied by loss of motor neurons and a sharp decrease in muscle mass, to a donor body.
Although Canavero claimed to have at least a 90 percent success rate for the operation, he lacked the minimum necessary evidence from previous animal experiments. The only proof at that time that GEMINI could work in principle was the publication of his Korean colleague Si Yun Kim. He reported that polyethylene glycol led to a partial recovery of motor function in mice with a cut spinal cord. At the same time, the attentive reader will find that although the experimental mice recovered slightly better, the difference with the control group was not statistically significant, that is, it could well be due to chance.
Arguments against
Despite the readiness of Spiridonov and the enthusiasm of Canavero, the possible operation raised many questions and sharp criticism from most professionals. The risk of patient death during the operation or shortly after it was extremely high: most of the animals died in the first days after transplantation. The risk of transplant rejection was also great - only powerful lifelong immunosuppressive therapy, in itself a source of mortal risk, could reduce it. The chances of gaining mobility were ephemeral and unconfirmed. But the risk of neuropathic pain that was difficult to treat was very real. Canavero also intended to cope with this problem surgically - by destroying the area of \u200b\u200bthe brain responsible for transmitting the emotional component of pain, which causes the suffering associated with it.
There would probably be other problems that we don't know about yet. But even the above is enough to understand: the balance of potential benefits and harms is unlikely in favor of the operation. The conclusion remains the same, even if we consider patients who face imminent death.
Some skeptics recalled another transplant surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini, who worked first at Karolinska and then at Kazan Federal Universities. He claimed that he had developed a technique for transplanting an artificial trachea containing stem cells - supposedly the organ takes root and does not cause an immune response in the patient's body. Later it turned out that the technique was not tested on animals, did not work in any case, and Macchiarini doomed several patients to a difficult operation and the suffering associated with it without the slightest hope of improvement.
Another, perhaps the most important, of the critics' arguments was of an absolutely practical nature. The demand for donor organs greatly exceeds the supply. On average, 20 people die every day without waiting for their turn. At the same time, the situation is not getting better: the list of those awaiting transplantation is growing faster than the number of available organs. Is it reasonable to use a donated body to save (with a slim chance of success) one life, instead of using these organs to save and improve the lives of 10-15 patients?
modest result
However, time passed, and the conversations remained conversations. Funded by the Chinese government, Canavero works with Ren Xiaoping. The recent publication is the result of their joint work. But we are no longer talking about a head transplant: the work is being done as part of a project to treat spinal cord injuries. Although Canavero sent out victorious press releases in late 2017 about a successful head transplant, the operation was. Meanwhile, Valery Spiridonov lost interest in the idea of becoming the first volunteer for such an operation, got married and moved to live in Florida. According to foreign media reports, his beautiful wife gave birth to a healthy child.
Expert opinion
I would treat this job with caution. The Canavero group almost two years ago published articles in which they said that it was already possible to perform a head transplant operation and there was a test subject - that Russian programmer. And only now the first article appears, which substantiates what supposedly could have been implemented two years ago. In standard practice, it happens the other way around: first you describe the theoretical base, then you conduct experiments in vitro, after in vivo, and only after that you start talking about the possibility of operations on people.
The theoretical basis on which this study is based is insufficient. If you look at the list of references in the article, it is very small, and basically the authors refer to themselves, to their research, and this is always alarming, as well as the size of the article.
The magazine itself, let's say, is not the top in the world. If this article were published with a bibliography of 60-100 names in cell or Lancet I would have more confidence in her.
It is important that Canavero and his colleagues were the initiators of the idea of using polyethylene glycol - it allegedly prevents the formation of a scar between nerve tissues and promotes recovery. But there is no independent confirmation of this.
And this statement itself is doubtful: the nerves do not grow into each other, not only because a scar is formed there, but also because they have, in principle, a low regenerative ability. Considering that the very same article states that no significant difference in scar formation could be found, the mechanism of action of polyethylene glycol becomes completely incomprehensible.
Many groups are working on methods for spinal cord repair. In particular, there are interesting results with electrical stimulation, there is evidence that electrical stimulation below the level of damage leads to accelerated growth, moreover, there are cautious attempts to apply this in humans. There is a research group by Martin Schwab that is exploring the possibilities of the Nogo-A family of proteins for cross-linking the spinal cord. But these works last for decades. It does not happen that you have written a four-page article and you can already apply it to a person.
I am not suggesting that the Canavero group is cheating. But longer studies are needed, evaluation on large groups of animals. And it is strange that they start with the spinal cord, and not with simpler models, for example, with nerves.
Alexey Kashcheev,
neurosurgeon, employee of the Scientific Center of Neurology
However, Canavero is unlikely to be satisfied with modest work on everyday medical problems. In recent interviews, he claimed that a head transplant was yesterday for him. Now Canavero is going to move on to the second stage of the project - transplanting the brain into a donor body and promises to perform this operation on a human in the next 3-5 years. I would like to believe that this time it will be limited to corpses.
Petr Talantov
Pre-order for the book “0.05. Evidence-based medicine from magic to the search for immortality "can be done on the publisher's website, discount code - 005
The book is published by the Corpus publishing house with the support of the Evolution Educational Foundation.
Literature
Sergio Canavero. HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI) // Surg Neurol Int. 2013; 4(Suppl 1): S335-S342.
Allen Furr, Mark A. Hardy, Juan P. Barret, John H. Barkerd. Surgical, ethical, and psychosocial considerations in human head transplantation // Int J Surg. May 2017; 41:190–195.
Nayan Lamba, Daniel Holsgrove, Marike L. Broekman. The history of head transplantation : a review // Acta Neurochir (Wien). 2016; 158(12): 2239–2247.
The first ever transplantation of a human head to a new body took place. The most complicated transplant operation went on continuously for 18 hours in China.
According to the site, the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero (Sergio Canavero) reported that the head transplant operation was successful. During the procedure, the surgeons managed to restore the functioning of the spine, nerves and blood vessels. It is worth noting that this operation took place with two corpses of people whose brains were still active. Canavero was assisted by highly qualified specialists from Harbin Medical University. Last year, experts successfully transplanted the head of a live monkey.
It is noted that in the near future Canavero is going to perform a similar operation on a living person. A test operation was performed on a corpse in preparation for a future operation on a living person. The test subject was supposed to be Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from a rare disease, which caused his body to almost completely fail. He volunteered.
However, Spiridonov himself recently revealed that so far the well-known surgeon has refused to operate on him, and a resident of China will become the first test subject. This situation arose due to the significant funding of medical operations of this kind by the Chinese government. Due to the fact that Russia does not allocate funds for research, Sergio Canavero is forced to comply with some formalities. According to preliminary information, the operation on Spiridonov will be carried out later.
In the community, such operations are still considered wrong from the point of view of ethics, and many experts criticize Canavero, the site reports.
Recently, news broke in the media that Sergio Canavero from Italy and his colleague Xiaoping Ren from China are planning to transplant a human head from a living person onto a donor corpse. Two surgeons have challenged modern medicine and are trying to make new discoveries. It is believed that the head donor will be someone with a degenerative disease whose body is depleted while the mind remains active. The body donor is likely to be someone who died from a severe head injury but whose body remained unharmed.
Human head transplant in 2017 was announced by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero
First human head transplant
The researchers claim to have perfected the technique on mice, a dog, a monkey and, more recently, a human corpse. The first human head transplant was scheduled to take place in 2017 in Europe. However, Canavero moved the operation to China because no American or European institution allowed such a transplant. This issue is very tightly regulated by Western bioethicists. It is believed that Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to return China to greatness by providing a home for such cutting-edge work.
In a telephone interview with USA TODAY, Canavero denounced the US or European reluctance to carry out the operation. "No American medical institute or center is pursuing this, and the US government doesn't want to support me," he said.
The human head transplant experiment was met with considerable skepticism, to say the least. Critics cite the lack of adequate prior and animal studies, the lack of published literature on the techniques and their results, unexplored ethical issues, and the circus atmosphere encouraged by Canavero. Many also worry about the origin of the donor body. The question has been raised more than once that China is using the organs of executed prisoners for transplantation.
Some bioethicists argue that it is necessary to simply ignore this topic in order not to contribute to the "circus of the world." However, one cannot simply deny reality. Canavero and Ren may not succeed in attempting a live human head transplant, but they certainly won't be the last to attempt a head transplant. For this reason, it is very important to consider the ethical implications of such an attempt beforehand.
Canavero presents the human head transplant as the natural next step in the transplant success story. Indeed, this story would be just wonderful: people live for many years with donated lungs, livers, hearts, kidneys and other internal organs.
2017 marked the anniversary of the oldest living, handed down by a father to his daughter; both are alive and well 50 years later. More recently, we have seen successfully transplanted arms, legs, and another. The first fully successful one occurred in 2014, as did the first live birth from a woman with a womb transplant.
Certainly face and penis transplants are difficult (many still fail), head and body transplants represent a whole new level of complexity.
Head transplant history
The issue of head transplantation was first raised in the early 1900s. However, transplant surgery at that time faced many challenges. The problem faced by vascular surgeons was that it was impossible to cut and then connect the damaged vessel and subsequently restore blood flow without interrupting blood circulation.
In 1908, Carrel and an American physiologist, Dr. Charles Guthrie, performed the first dog head transplant. They attached one dog's head to the neck of another dog, connecting the arteries so that blood would flow first to the decapitated head and then to the head of the recipient. The severed head was without blood flow for approximately 20 minutes, and while the dog demonstrated auditory, visual, skin reflexes, and reflex movements in the early postoperative period, it only worsened and was euthanized a few hours later.
Although their work on head transplantation was not particularly successful, Carrel and Guthrie made significant contributions to the understanding of the field of vascular anastomosis transplantation. In 1912 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.
Another milestone in the history of head transplantation was achieved in the 1950s thanks to the work of the Soviet scientist and surgeon Dr. Vladimir Demikhov. Like his predecessors, Carrel and Guthrie, Demikhov made notable contributions to the field of transplant surgery, especially thoracic surgery. He improved on the methods available at the time to maintain vascular nutrition during organ transplantation and was able to perform the first successful coronary bypass operation in dogs in 1953. Four dogs survived for more than 2 years after the operation.
In 1954, Demikhov also attempted to transplant the heads of dogs. Demikhov's dogs demonstrated more functionality than Guthrie's and Carrel's dogs and were able to move, see and lap water. Demikhov's step-by-step documentation of the protocol, published in 1959, shows how his team carefully preserved the blood supply to the donor dog's lungs and heart.
Two-headed dog from Demikhov's experiment
Demikhov showed that dogs can live after such an operation. However, most dogs lived only a few days. The maximum survival of 29 days was achieved, which is more than in the experiment of Guthrie and Carrel. This survival was due to the immune response of the recipient to the donor. At this time, effective immunosuppressive drugs were not used, which could change the results of the studies.
In 1965, the American neurosurgeon Robert White also attempted a head transplant. His goal was to perform a brain transplant on an isolated body, contrary to Guthrie and Demikhov, who transplanted the entire upper body of the dog, not just the isolated brain. This required him to develop various perfusion techniques.
Maintaining blood flow to the isolated brain was Robert White's biggest challenge. He created vascular loops to preserve the anastomoses between the internal maxillary and internal carotid arteries of the donor dog. This system was called "autoperfusion" because it allowed the brain to be perfused by its own carotid system even after it had been torn at the second cervical vertebral body. The brain was then placed between the jugular vein and carotid artery of the recipient. Using these perfusion techniques, White was able to successfully transplant six brains into the cervical vasculature of six large recipient dogs. The dogs survived between 6 and 2 days.
With continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring, White monitored the viability of the transplanted brain tissue and compared the brain activity of the transplant with that of the recipient. Moreover, using an implantable recording module, it also monitored the metabolic state of the brain by measuring oxygen and glucose consumption and demonstrated that the transplanted brains were in a highly efficient metabolic state after the operation, another indication of the functional success of the transplant.
Head transplant for Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov
Back in 2015, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero proposed the first live human head transplant as early as 2017. To prove that the procedure would be possible, he reconstructed a severed dog's spinal cord and attached a mouse's head to a rat's body. He even managed to find a volunteer in the person of Valery Spiridonov, but it seems that the operation may not move forward as originally planned.
Doctors from all over the world say that the operation is doomed to failure, and even if Spiridonov survives, he will not live a happy life.
Dr. Hunt Butger, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, said: “I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Valery Spiridonov volunteered to undergo the world's first full head transplant, to be performed by the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, but after a while he changed his mind. Spiridonov suffered from severe muscular atrophy and was a wheelchair user all his life.
Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man in his 30s, volunteered to undergo this surgical procedure because he believes the head transplant would improve his quality of life. Valery was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This genetic disease causes his muscles to break down and kills nerve cells in his spinal cord and brain. There is currently no known cure.
How did the story of a head transplant to a Russian programmer end?
Recently, Valery announced that he would not undergo the procedure, because the doctor could not promise him what he so wanted: that he would walk again, be able to have a normal life. Moreover, Sergio Canavero said that the volunteer may not survive the operation.
Given that I cannot rely on my Italian colleague, I must take my health into my own hands. Luckily, there is a fairly well proven operation for cases like mine where a steel implant is used to keep the spine straight. Valery Spiridonov said
The Russian volunteer will now seek alternative spinal surgery to improve her life, instead of undergoing an experimental procedure that has been criticized by several researchers in the scientific community.
At the beginning of 2018, foreign media regularly and very actively posted news about the Russian volunteer Valery Spiridonov. However, after the refusal of the operation, their interest in the disabled person subsided.
Human head transplantation is a very complex procedure, as it requires reconnection of the spine. After the operation, it is necessary to manage the immune system to prevent rejection of the head from the donor body.
Some interesting facts:
- Spiridonov has already won. The doctors told him that he should have died from an illness years ago.
- Valery works from home in Vladimir, about 180 kilometers east of Moscow, running an educational software business.
- Spiridonov is terminally ill. He is wheelchair bound due to Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. A genetic disorder that causes motor neurons to die. The disease has limited his movements to feed himself, he controls the joystick on a wheelchair.
- Spiridonov is not the only person who volunteered to be the first potentially successful head transplant patient. Nearly a dozen others, including a man whose body is full of tumors, asked doctors to go first.
- Spiridonov came up with a new way to help finance the operation, with preliminary estimates that the cost of the operation was between US$10 million and US$100 million. He began selling hats, T-shirts, mugs, and iPhone cases, all featuring a head on a new body.
Head transplant in China
In December 2017, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero performed the first head transplant on two cadaveric donors in China. With this procedure, he attempted to make spinal fusion (taking an entire human head and attaching it to a donor body) a reality and declared that the operation was successful.
Many scientists around the world believe that the successful human head transplant claimed by Canavero is actually a failure! This is argued by the fact that no actual results of a human head transplant after transplantation have been shown to the public. Sergio Canavero gained a reputation in wide circles as a fraudster and populist.
Dr. Canavero did a head transplant with another doctor named Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical University, a Chinese neurosurgeon who successfully grafted a head onto a monkey body last year. Canavero and Dr. Ren were not the only ones involved in this operation. More than 100 doctors and nurses were on standby during this procedure for 18 hours. Answering the question of journalists “how much does a head transplant cost”, Canavero said that this procedure cost more than 100 million US dollars.
The first head transplant in China was successful. Operation on human corpses completed. We did a head transplant, no matter what anyone says! Canavero said at a conference in Vienna. He said that an 18-hour operation on two corpses showed that it was possible to restore the spinal cord and blood vessels.
Sergio Canavero and Xiaoping Ren
Since then, Canavero has been called the "Dr. Frankenstein of medicine" and has been criticized for his actions. We can say that Sergio Canavero is a man who plays god or wants to cheat death.
Ren and Canavero hope their invention could one day help patients with paralysis and spinal cord injuries walk again.
These patients currently do not have good strategies and their mortality is very high. So I try to promote this technique to help these patients,” Prof. Ren told CNBC. “This is my main strategy for the future.”
If doctors really did a head transplant to a person (a living recipient), it would be a breakthrough in the field of transplantology. Such a successful operation could mean saving terminally ill patients, as well as enabling people with spinal injuries to walk again.
Jan Schnapp, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said: “Despite Professor Canavero’s enthusiasm, I cannot imagine that ethics committees at any reputable research or clinical institution will give the green light to live human head transplants in the foreseeable future… Indeed, attempting such an act , given the current state of the art, would be nothing short of a crime.
Any innovative procedure is sure to face objections and skepticism, and requires a leap of faith. Although it all seems impossible, a human head transplant would revolutionize the field of medicine if successful.
Ethical Issues
Some doctors say the chances of success are so low that attempting a head transplant would be tantamount to murder. But even if it were feasible, even if we could connect the head and body and have a living person at the end, this is only the beginning of the ethical questions about the procedure for creating a hybrid life.
If we transplanted your head onto my body, who would it be? In the West, we tend to think that what you are - your thoughts, memories, emotions - is entirely in your brain. Since the resulting hybrid has its own brain, we take it as an axiom that this person will be you.
But there are many reasons to worry that such a conclusion is premature.
First, our brain is constantly monitoring, reacting and adapting to our body. An entirely new body would cause the brain to engage in a massive reorientation to all of its new inputs, which could over time change the fundamental nature and connectivity of the brain (what scientists call a "connect").
Dr. Sergio Canavero stated at a conference in Vienna that the head transplant on a cadaver was successful.
The brain will not be the same as it was before, still attached to the body. We don't know exactly how it will change you, your sense of self, your memories, your connection to the world - we only know that it will.
Second, neither scientists nor philosophers have a clear idea of how the body contributes to our essential sense of self.
The second largest nerve cluster in our body, after the brain, is the bundle in our gut (technically called the enteric nervous system). The ENS is often described as a "second brain" and is so vast that it can operate independently of our brain; that is, it can make its own “decisions” without the involvement of the brain. In fact, the enteric nervous system uses the same neurotransmitters as the brain.
You may have heard of serotonin, which may play a role in regulating our moods. Well, about 95 percent of the body's serotonin is produced in the gut, not the brain! We know that the ENS has a strong influence on our emotional states, but we do not understand its full role in determining who we are, how we feel, and how we behave.
Moreover, there has recently been an explosion in research into the human microbiome, the large mix of bacterial life that lives within us; It turns out that we have more microorganisms in our body than in human cells. More than 500 types of bacteria live in the gut, and their exact composition differs from person to person.
There are other reasons to be concerned about a head transplant. The United States suffers from an acute shortage of donor organs. The average waiting time for a kidney transplant is five years, a liver transplant is 11 months, and a pancreas is two years. One corpse can give two kidneys, as well as a heart, liver, pancreas, and possibly other organs. Using the whole body for a single head transplant with a slim chance of success is unethical.
Canavero estimates that the cost of the world's first human head transplant is $100 million. How much good can be done with such funds? Calculating is actually not so difficult!
When and if it becomes possible to repair a severed spinal cord, this revolutionary achievement should be aimed primarily at the many thousands of people who suffer from paralysis as a result of a torn or injured spinal cord.
There are also unresolved legal issues. Who is a hybrid person legally? Is the "head" or the "body" the legitimate person? The body is more than 80 percent of the mass, so it is more of a donor than a recipient. Who according to the law will be the children and spouses of the donor to the recipient? After all, the body of their relative will live, but with a “different head”.
The history of head transplantation does not end there, on the contrary, every day new facts, questions, problems emerge.
