World’s First Head Transplant Volunteer

Could Experience Something “Worse Than

Death”
June 10, 2018 admin Neurovascular Surgery, Vascular Surgery 0
Credit: gbtimes
“I would not wish this on anyone,” says top surgeon.

In April, 2015, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, announced that he will
become the subject of the first human head transplant ever performed, saying he would
volunteer to have his head removed and installed on another person’s body.

If this sounds like some kind of sick joke, we’re right there with you, but unfortunately,
this was – and still might be – all too real.

Earlier that year, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he
would intend to follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, and said he
planned to launch the project at the annual conference of the American Academy of
Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in the US in June, where he will
invite other researchers to join him in his head transplant dream.

At the time, it sounded completely outlandish – and it still does today – but the
difference was that Canavero actually found himself a living, breathing volunteer willing
to be the guinea pig for what Christopher Hootan at The Independent predicted to be
a 36-hour operation requiring the assistance of 150 doctors and nurses. You can read
about the procedure here.

Hootan brought home what really would be at stake for Spiridonov – it’s not just death
he’d have to worry about:

“A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly declining health, Spiridonov is willing

to take a punt on this very experimental surgery and you can’t really blame him, but
while he is prepared for the possibility that the body will reject his head and he will die,
his fate could be considerably worse than death,” says Hootan.

“I would not wish this on anyone,” said Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American
Association for Neurological Surgeons. “I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there
are a lot of things worse than death.”
From speaking to several medical experts, Hootan pin-pointed a problem that even the
most perfectly performed head transplant procedure could never mitigate – we have
literally no idea what this will do to Spiridonov’s mind.

There’s no telling what the transplant – and all the new connections and foreign
chemicals that his head and brain would have to suddenly deal with – might have done
to Spiridonov’s psyche, but as Hootan puts it rather chillingly, it “could result in a
hitherto never experienced level and quality of insanity”.

This could still actually be happening, and we’re terrified.

Also, I’ve suddenly got a great idea for a movie, and judging from the creepy
performance below, Canavero could pretty much be cast as himself.

The last news on this intended head transplant was Canavero claiming late last
year to have successfully transplanted the head on human cadaver.

Still creepy. Stay tuned.

SUMMARY:

A 30 years old Russian volunteered to be the first human subject for head
transplant he is Valery Spiridonov. He is willing to install his head to another body.
Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he would intend to
follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, and said he planned to launch the
project at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and
Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in the US in June, where he will invite other
researchers to join him in his head transplant dream.
Canavero is willing to volunteer himself as a volunteer for head transplant. The
surgery is predicted to be done for 36 hours with the help of 150 doctors and nurses. A
lot of surgeon is not agree to this, like Hootan he said that even the most perfectly
performed head transplant procedure could never mitigate.

The last news on this intended head transplant was Canavero claiming late last
year to have successfully transplanted the head on human cadaver.
RATIONALE:

The article about the head transplant is very amazing I did not expect that it
would be possible. According to my research it was in 2015 that he first gained
worldwide fame (or more likely, notoriety) when he presented his plans to conduct the
procedure in the near future. He even had a volunteer for the surgery – a Russian man
named Valery Spiridonov, who was suffering from a debilitating muscular disease.

Then, two years later, he once again captured the spotlights when he announced that
the procedure had been successfully carried out in China. Canavero made this shocking
announcement at a press conference organized in Vienna but elaborated that the
surgery had taken place on a cadaver.

As Canavero explained, a team under the guidance of Dr. Xiaoping Ren, his associate,
performed the transplant on a corpse in China. He claims that the surgery lasted 18
hours and showed that it was possible to sever a head and then reconnect the nerves,
spinal cord, and blood vessels. In his view, that was enough to qualify it as the world’s
first human head transplant.

The procedure is a continuation of the team’s previous work where they cut the head of
one rat and grafted it onto the body of a different one. They repeated the process
several times, effectively creating animals with two heads. Reportedly, the rats were
able to survive for a day and a half, on average. Canavero had also
previously performed a procedure where he claimed to have reconnected the severed
spinal cord of a dog – meant to serve as proof of concept.

Following the procedure in China, Canavero had made his further plans clear. The next
stage would be to perform the transplant using living donors who are brain-dead. What
is more, the plan was for the procedure to take place “imminently’.

Now, this does not mean there is no merit to his work. Tests on cadavers are an
integral part of discovering new medical techniques. However, it does seem that we are
a long way off from the point where this procedure can become feasible. And it is
questionable if we’ll ever get there.