9 years ago
4
First Head Transplant Patient Schedules Surgery for 2017
An Italian neurosurgeon will perform the procedure on volunteer Valery Spiridonov, who has a genetic muscle-wasting disease.
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I remember reading about Canavero a while back when the man volunteered for this surgery. Canavero seems to pin his hopes for success on his findings regarding rats that had had their spinal cords severed and reconnected to the same body with circulatory systems intact, a somewhat far cry from transplanting a head to a different body. Doesn't seem like this will succeed; his team doesn't have much support at all in the medical community, even setting aside the ethical considerations.
Not only that, it's not like the rat experiment went well either way. I know for a fact that those rats you mentioned did manage to breathe and eat and drink, but only lived for a few minutes after their heads rejected their new bodies. Another mad scientist tried to do the same with Rhesus monkeys, but the spinal cord was disconnected. The monkey was paralized from the neck down and just like the rats, he died of new organ rejection.
There has to be a better way to get ahead in life.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this idea is far-fetched. I'm not saying it wouldn't be extremely cool and groundbreaking if it could be done. It just seems like there isn't enough actual study and lab results to support the fact that beheading him won't lead to his death within minutes.