Do you remember that in February, the Italian surgeon and neurologist Sergio Canavero announced that he is planning to perform the first human head transplant in December, 2017. Most people didn’t accept this news quite enthusiastically, but it is what it is.
The experiment went step forward with the announcement that Ren Xiaoping, a surgeon at the Harbin Medical University in China, will cooperate with Canavero in the performance of this controversial procedure.
You are maybe familiar with the fact that the project already has a volunteer: Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year- old Russian man with muscle atrophy, who even back in April announced that he feels ready to remove his head and have it attached to other person`s body. He states: “My decision is permanent and I don’t plant to change my opinion”. Even if it sounds a bit morbid, he says that the head transplant will be his birthday gift.
During the recent seminar, “Borders of Science” held in the north-east part of China, Canavero said that he managed to recruit a surgeon who is going to give him a hand in the performance of this controversial procedure. Dr. Ren is the only person in the world who is able to lead this project, and China is the best choice for the performance of human head transplant.
Everyone who already entered the world of head transplants knows the name of Ren Xiaoping. Since 2013, he had performed up to 1,000 head transplants on mice and the announced his plans on performing the same procedure on primate this year.
The mice with new heads are able to successfully breathe, drink, and see.
Even though he isn’t quite hopeful about all of this, Xiaoping says that he managed to perfect the procedure, especially when it comes to feeding the oxidized brain blood from their new bodies. But even in those cases, he hopes that the primates will live a little more than mice.
About 5 decades ago, the first “successful” head transplant was done. In 1970, at the Medical University in Western, Reserve in USA, the head of one monkey was attached to the body of another monkey. This hybrid was able to live for nine days with the help of breathing backdrop.
The President of the American Neurological Association says that Spiridonov shouldn’t agree to the operation, even though he himself is convinced that this is his best option. There are worse things that death.
In addition, take a look at the video in which Xiaoping talks about his work on mice.
