The Russian patient set to undergo the world’s first ever human head transplant, Valery Spiridonov has announced that he is ready for the super-complex operation, which some critics have described as a fantasy.
31-year-old Spiridonov is a computer scientist. He has been restricted in a wheelchair due to a muscle-wasting disease.
Mr Spiridonov is suffering from what is known technically as Werdnig-Hoffman, also known as spinal muscular atrophy. The devastating disease which inflicts its patient during infancy, results in problems moving, breathing and swallowing. Experts say most people with the disease die within the first few years of life. It is estimated that about only 10% patients survive the disease into adulthood.
Spiridonov told the Daily Mail in an interview sometime ago, that his condition is worsening day-by-day, revealing that he wants the chance of having a new body before the disease kills him.
Before the Mail interview, Spiridonov had gone to volunteer as a guinea pig for a complex operation by the Italian neurosurgeon, Dr Sergio Canavero. Dr Canavero announced that he can cut off the head of a human being, attaching it to another human body, and there will still be life. As a severely handicapped person, Spiridonov therefore volunteered; so that his head could be cut off and attach to a healthy body, hoping he can have his freedom to walk. It is said the new body would come from a transplant donor who is classified brain dead, but with a healthy body.
Speaking at a press conference, Spiridonov said he is ready to put his trust in the seemly controversial Dr Canavero. Mr Spiridonov said he is ready for the operation, and that he has been in touch with Dr Canavero who has promised him that he will give details of the operation next month. He also said he fully understand the risks, revealing that his family fully supports his decision to undergo the operation.
“I continue the dialogue with Mr Canavero, we exchange information and as far as I know, he is preparing a portion of news this September. If you want something to be done, you need to participate in it. I do understand the risks of such surgery. They are multiple. We can’t even imagine what exactly can go wrong. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t live long enough to see it happen to someone else,” Spiridonov said.
Despite criticisms by some neurosurgeons, who expect the operation is not possible, Dr Canavero insists it is possible. According to him, all the necessary techniques to transplant a head onto a donor body already exist. He has named the procedure for the operation HEAVEN, which is an acronym for head anastomosis venture. Anastomosis involves the surgical connecting of two parts.
The Daily Mail reports that the cost of the 36-hour operation, which could only be performed in one of the world’s most advanced operating theatres, has been estimated to cost about £14 million.
According to the procedure, narrated by Dr Canavero, both donor and patient would have their head severed from their body at the same time, using an ultra-sharp blade to give a clean cut. The patient’s head would then be placed onto the donor’s body and attached using what Dr Canavero calls his ‘magic ingredient’ – a glue-like substance called polyethylene glycol – to fuse the two ends of the spinal cord together.
The muscles and blood supply would be stitched up, before the patient is put into a coma for four weeks to stop the patient from moving while the head and body heal together. When the coma period elapses, the patient should be able to move, feel his face and even speak with the same voice. Powerful immunosuppressant drugs would then be given to the patient to stop the new body from rejecting the new head.
However, Critics say Dr Canavero has over simplified the difficulties involved in attaching a new human head to a new human body. They believe his procedure is pure fantasy.
The first animal head transplant was performed in 1970 by the American neurosurgeon, Dr Robert White. He transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. But the monkey died just after eight days because the body rejected the head.
Before Dr White died in 2010, he hoped in the 1990’s to perform head transplant surgery on the British Theoretical Physicist, Stephen Hawking and the actor Christopher Reeve.
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Excuse my language, but this is absolutely fking disgusting! Bloody hell! This Frankenstein must have done the switcharoo before, fo sho!
I do understand the point of view of Mr Spiridonov big times but I do doubt that once he wakes from the coma, his whole is going to function properly. No matter the drugs against the physical rejection… what about a very possible DNA per se’, rejection?
Let’s just wait and see? Mmmmm… I do believe human technology should only exist to heal, not to substitute. We don’t even know how our DNA works, and now we want to play God? And let’s not even mention the fkin disgraceful permit to ‘make’ hybrids of humans and animals…
Isn’t the shit that is going around the world more than enough as it is, without now having also screamed into our faces, that experiments on humans are today actually legal and that we gotta get used to this too?
Honestly…what the fk is wrong with the world? We are all born different to one an other, also to teach our souls and spirits very important existential lessons… To end up all like fkin barbie and ken, then let the robots substitute us cause we then, really do not deserve to exist all together.
Fk in hell!
ya and also how will his magical glue connect a spine and make it so you can control everything normal? can i get that magical glue if i break my spine?
Religion and profanity as well as framing your opinion as an absolute “I’m right, you’re wrong” leads me to believe college wasn’t really in the cards was it? As always, progress is held in check because people can’t seem to think outside their dogma. Oh, and then of course, everyone has to shove their religion down any dissenter who dare speak. Do you see this man? What living torture is that? Why not attempt to see how far science has come? Sure it’ll fail most likely, but it’d save him from pain and give valuable data to improve the procedure and potentially save thousands in the future.
Every single medical procedure that doctors use today was once done as human experimentations. Today, medical experimentation exists in many forms. A lot of the prescription drugs we take are currently or were at some point experiments on humans. Medical science cannot advance WITHOUT human experiments, because how will surgeons know how to treat diseases in humans without even knowing what makes us tick? I don’t think this is going to work, but, if by doing this we learn something valuable about the central nervous system…isn’t it a little worth it? The guy is going in knowing full well that he can either die from his disease or die for medical science. I think that’s quite noble.
Also, “permits to make hybrids of humans and animals” is only partly true, because the US has not approved it, but it was just a proposal. I think this means we are still years away from the South Park Man-Dolphins.
Mmmm hmmmm fo shaaw.
Sure it’s like putting God on test.But my dear friends u can’t choose to live in that chair.Science is a natural gift from God,lets try and use it so many lives can be saved..
I agree its wrong!!…………..but if I was the one dieing and had that 1 one chance to walk and live longer ,….I would as I like it here,..xx
As someone who studies medicine I am 99% sure that this will not work. To do something like this
1. the donor and beneficiary would have to have the same sized neck
2. get the nerves to fuse which hasnt been done in humans where both parts are their own nerve cord
3. get all to most of the blood vessels to fuse together, and depending on where he cuts the could be 1 major and a litteral butt ton of smaller ones
4. get the trachea to fuse
5. do all of this, which has never been done before on a human, in under 6 minutes
6. inject drugs and hope that the body accepts the head
Due to all of these factors I pernouce this guy dead, sorry.
Lets say they will transfer the head successfully,but they forgot one thing,his soul won’t come back in the new body,thats the difference between us and animals.
Your soul is your conciousness. It is your ego, your personality that is made up of millions of experiences over your life span. As long as the memories remain intact, your soul remains.
Mr, Spiridonov knows the risks and accepts them .. He wants a chance , slim though it may
be to live life different from the prison of a wheelchair and in the face of a worsening of
his condition.. Who are we to condemn his wish to try.. Granted the procedure seems very
risky and the outcome in serious doubt.. I have been blessed to have not had the burden
of Mr. Spiridonov’s condition in my life.. If he dies from the procedure , he died doing
what he wished and I for one wish him only the best outcome in his uest to improve his
quality of life..
dont put your “god” on this. If science could make it possibble, it should be done. Period.
Remember on the dark ages when the priest said that person was too sick to be cured? well, if someone cured that person after they would burn on the stake. Progress is unstopable.
Who said that priest knew god, and he was right, at the time nothing would have cured that person… ask those who invented the cure, did they need the help of god or science.