The technical problems are largely dissolved, the big problem are ethical questions after him
Given the lack of human spare bodies, there is a bleeding trade in the black market. Arms people sell in developing lands against little money, for example, a kidney for a guided receptionist who can afford transplantation and journey into the country. In China, institutions are removed executed, but practice should be ended (China does not want organs of executed more transplants). Illegal and violent. Dead withdrawals should also give it.
But these are only body parts that can integrate the receiver, albeit occasionally with coarse psychological problems, in its corner image. This is problematic, especially if it is not about organs that can not be seen and therefore can be impeded well as a foreign body, but to limbs such as arms (transplantation of limbs instead of prostheses) or a facial transplant, where the receptioner is in a very different way This confronts to live with vibrant spare parts of a dead.
Picture (cutout) from the 16. Century of Santino di San Donnino, the patron of the diocosis of Fidenza, which was beheaded by the soldiers of the Roman Emperor Maximians and became the Maryrer. Image: Oxxo / CC-BY-SA-2.5
Now the Italian physician Sergio Canavero wants to transplant whole human head from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group. This was already realized in animals, Canavero has now presented the technology in an article in the magazine Surgical Neurology International, which plant the upgrades "of a healthy head on a surgically beheaded corpers under deep hypothermic conditions" should be measured in humans. And he plans how he announced New Scientist, for the first time to carry out such a surgery 2017. He thinks of people who under cancer or muscle or muscle. Nerve shadies suffer. He already received some requests from people who want a new body after being explored his project 2 years ago.
Robert White had 1970 transplanted the head of a monkey on a body. The quaint monkey surprised this now nine days – and was also taken and had to be beaten artificially because the Ruckenmark could not be connected. He died at the immune defense, the body removed the stranger head. This is better under control today, but lifelong medications must be taken to immunosuppression, which in turn bring risks.
Canavero is the conviction to have developed a possibility based on successful animal experiments with cut-out inches, as the leakmark of the head and the beheaded body can grow together that no planning occurs. Decisive for the Gemini method for the injection marrow fusion, smooth cuts are by surgery, where the brain control of the movement the "Highway" The gray substance is maplievable, while the pyramidal web of the woman’s substance neglect. The damage to the gray substance is also involved in multiple sclerosis. The gray substance also has the advantage that it converted quickly and spontaneously over very short distances at the contact point of the backmark, supported by electrical stimulation and fusion and remedies polyethylene glycol (PEG) and the biopolymer Chitosan for the blood, glia and neuron cells. Canavero suggests the head of the receiver and the donor corper before starting the operation. This demands the time in which both do without oxygen. Then the coarse blood applied are connected and the backmark is opened. After surgery, the patient is put into an artificial coma for about four weeks in order to prevent him from moving and thus spoken, flapsig, separating his head together with his new body or interrupted the treatment. After just one month, the patient should already move his head and can speak, within a year he should then be depressed inside in the new body in order to go again.
Xiao-ping ren from the medical University Harbin in China, as he has last November in the magazine CNS Neuroscience Therapeutics reported to transplant head of mice. As New Scientist reports, he wants to try Canaveros method in the next few months on mice and monkeys.
Canavero is optimistic. He sees the technical aspects as in principle, as a real problem he considers the associated ethical questions. Many people were rejecting the transplantation. According to the neurologist and bioethicist Patricia Scropko of Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System in California, ethical association depends on the definition of human life. If one ames that the personality of a human and the specific human is in the brain, then a head transplantation was not responsible for this. By contrast, when you change the brain, "then you are no longer the same person and you should ask yourself if this is ethically responsible". Of course, the goods already with the intake of psychopharmaca the case. But she believes that in many cultures a head transplant was rejected because people of conviction are that the soul is not alone in the brain.
Even if Canavero receive a permit for the surgery in the US or in Europe and in fact a head transplant successfully performed, the question remains how people can with the foreign body of a dead life. However, it could be easier than after a facial surgery, as at least the head of the same was, while a stranger from the mirror after a full face transplantation.
New Scientist reports, many surgeons that you have asked for a comment did not want to do this because the project was too secretable. And hardly anyone believes that this is doing well. Nevertheless, Canavero receive a bean in June at the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (Aanos), where he is allowed to learn his project. This not only creates attention and advertising for Canavero, but also for the congress.