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In 2015, Italian doctor Sergio Canavero announced his intention to perform a human head transplant. Despite the fact that attempts to carry out such a transplant have been ongoing since the beginning of the 20th century, no one had previously decided to conduct an experiment with the participation of a living person.
Head transplant to Valery Spiridonov
Valery Spiridonov, a programmer from Russia, wanted to become the first patient. He was diagnosed with a rare hereditary disease– Werdnig-Hoffman syndrome, which causes the destruction of spinal cord cells. Valery is almost completely paralyzed, and his condition only worsens over time.
The essence of the procedure
The head was going to be transplanted onto the body of a donor, who they planned to look for among people who died in a car accident or were sentenced to death. The main difficulty is how to connect the spinal cord fibers of the donor and recipient. Canavero stated that he would use polyethylene glycol for these purposes, a substance that, according to research data, can help restore neural connections.
After the operation, the patient was planned to be put into a coma, which would last 4 weeks, in order to immobilize the person while the head and body healed. During this time, electrical stimulation of the spinal cord will be performed to strengthen neural connections with the brain.
After the patient comes out of the coma, he will need to take drugs that suppress the immune system - immunosuppressants. This is necessary to prevent the head from being torn away from the body. There is reason to believe that during rehabilitation a person will need the help of a psychologist.
The operation with the participation of a Russian programmer was planned for 2017.
How did the experiment end?
Sergio Canavero was looking for sources of funding for his medical project, but these attempts did not lead to results for a long time. European and American universities refused to conduct the experiment. Funding was offered by the Chinese government, and the operation was planned to be carried out on the basis of Harbin University together with Professor Ren Xiaoping.
The Chinese government insisted that the donor be a citizen of their country. The surgery requires that the donor and recipient be of the same race. On this basis, Canavero denied Valery Spiridonov the opportunity to participate in the first human head transplant operation.
In November 2017, Canavero announced he was undergoing a head transplant. dead person. The operation ended well - doctors were able to connect the spine, nerves and blood vessels donor and recipient. Many experts in this field are skeptical about this experiment as a scientific breakthrough, because... they believe that surgery on corpses is of little indication for possible repetition with the participation of a living patient.
History of head transplant experiments
The first head transplant was performed in 1908 by Charles Guthrie. He sewed a second head to the dog's body and connected their circulatory systems. Scientists observed primitive reflexes in the second head, and after a few hours the dog was euthanized.
A major contribution was made by the Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov, who conducted experiments in the 1950s. He ensured that the dog lived 29 days after the operation. She also showed more abilities after the experiment. The difference was that Demikhov also transplanted the forelimbs, esophagus and lungs.
In 1970, Robert White performed head transplants on monkeys. Scientists managed to maintain blood flow in the head during separation, which allowed, after connecting with circulatory system donor to keep the brain alive. The animals lived for several days.
In the early 2000s. Japanese scientists performed transplantation on rats. They connected spinal cord using low temperatures.
The ability of polyethylene glycol and chitosan to restore nerve cells spinal cord was proven by studies conducted in Germany in 2014. Under the influence of these substances, rats that were paralyzed demonstrated the ability to move within a month.
Scientists from Russia plan to carry out an operation to transplant a human brain into a robot body by 2025.
The world's first human head transplant will take place in China. This was announced by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who is going to perform this unique operation. Previously Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. But now, apparently, he decided to change plans.
30-year-old Valery Spiridonov has a complex genetic disease- spinal muscular atrophy. He is practically unable to move. Everyone expected that Valery would become the first person in history to receive a body transplant. Or the head; there is no consensus among doctors on what to call this transplant. He had been preparing for the most complex and so far unique operation of its kind since 2015.
"I'm not trying to commit some sophisticated method of suicide. No, it's not like that. I'm happy with what I have. And I have confidence that everyone understands what they're doing. It's just that someone technically should be the first. Why not me?" - he said.
The transplant was to be performed by a neurosurgeon from Italy, Sergio Canavero. Spiridonov flew to the USA to meet with him after online consultations.
And now, six months before the planned operation, news comes: the first patient to undergo a head transplant will not be a Russian, but a citizen of the People's Republic of China. The official reason is as follows: they decided to carry out the operation in China, and the donor and recipient must belong to the same race.
"We will have to look for donors among local residents. And we cannot give snow-white Valery the body of a person of a different race. We cannot yet name the new candidate. We are in the process of choosing,” said Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon.
However, many are sure that it is more a matter of funding and national prestige. In China, head transplant surgery is funded by state level. A separate clinic in Harbin will be allocated for this. Dozens of local doctors will help the Italian neurosurgeon. And the patient’s choice will most likely also fall on a citizen of the People’s Republic of China.
"The Chinese decided to carry out this operation because they want to get Nobel Prize and establish your country as an engine of scientific progress. This is a kind of new space race,” Canavero is sure.
The operation is expected to last about 36 hours and cost $15 million. Once frozen, the heads will be separated from the bodies. And the recipient's head will be attached to the donor's body using special biological glue. Polyethylene glycol will be injected into the affected areas of the spinal cord; with its help, it has already been possible to restore connections between thousands of neurons in animals.
Trial operations on patients in the condition are planned for the fall of 2017. clinical death. This is necessary to hone your technique. surgical procedures. Previously, Sergio Canavero had already managed to sew on a second head of a mouse and transplant the head of a monkey. However, the monkey was euthanized 20 hours after the operation. And the transplanted mouse head did not send impulses to other parts of the body.
And many neurosurgeons still doubt that when performing an operation on a person it will actually be possible to successfully fuse the spinal cord and preserve the vital functions of the brain.
“Technically, there are many problems with stitching together many vessels, nerves, bones. But these are solvable options. The main problem is how to make impulses from the head through the stitched spinal cord pass down and back? Unfortunately, this technique does not work yet, there is no such technique ", says the Russian doctor.
Myself Italian surgeon estimates the chances of success to be 90 percent. And I am sure that this will be a breakthrough in the field of transplantation, which will give a chance for life to people with many serious diseases - from spinal muscle atrophy to now incurable forms of cancer.
In November at Harbin University Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero and a group of Chinese neurosurgeons performed an operation to transplant the head of a deceased person onto dead body another. Canavero said he was able to successfully repair the spine, nerves and blood vessels. However, his Chinese counterpart Ren Xiaoping a little later he stated that he did not think this procedure operation as such. In his opinion, this should be considered as a model of real surgical intervention.
The chief transplantologist of the Ministry of Health of Russia, the head of the Federal State Institution "FSC of Transplantology and artificial organs named after Academician V.I. Shumakov”, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Medical Sciences Sergei Gauthier.
“In principle, it is technically possible to do this. You can do this to preserve brain activity. But restoration is correct nervous regulation the donor body using this brain is very doubtful. Necessary proper recovery conductive tracts of the spinal cord, which will be crossed by the surgeon, and in the future must be fused, glued or stitched. No one has done this before, and there are no reasonable assumptions for this. I know that the Canavero group has its own view on these things and promises success. A very well-founded experimental confirmation of the possibilities for such an operation is needed. The first operation in China serves as a teaching aid for further development of the technique. It’s unlikely that such developments are underway in our country; I don’t know about them. We have a lot of other problems that we need to solve besides sewing on the head,” the expert said.
The main goal of a head transplant operation is to enable an immobilized person to walk again, according to the deputy chief transplantologist of St. Petersburg, head of the experimental surgery laboratory of the Research Center of the First St. Petersburg State University medical university named after Academician I.P. Pavlov Dmitry Suslov. “Suppose they sew up the vessels, the blood from the head to the torso will flow and flow out through them. This is not the function of the head. There will be no movement in the body that is sewn to this head. The issues of spinal cord regeneration are still open. Successful experiments no one has anything to do with animals. Because the first indicator that we were able to solve the problem of regeneration of nervous tissues of such a complex structure as the spinal cord would be successful treatment patients with spinal injuries. Which, unfortunately, is not the case yet,” he told AiF.ru.
The expert is confident that the Canavero group is making loud statements for PR purposes. “On this occasion, I can say this: it would be better if you (journalists - approx. AiF.ru) promoted them less. These people have already risen well from this. They're just making big statements. This is a way to attract attention and, accordingly, a lot of money,” Suslov said.
“In our country they are not working on head transplants; we are working on treating spinal injuries. Scientists are studying the spinal cord, but without such fanfare, they don’t shout: “We are transplanting a head!” Sergey Bryukhonenko back at the beginning of the 20th century, he revived the head of a dog, but nothing came of it. Many people also carried out similar experiments, but nothing came of it either. The issue of treating spinal injury is a Nobel Prize, if this problem can be solved,” the expert said.
Recently, news appeared in the media that Sergio Canavero from Italy and his colleague Xiaoping Ren from China are planning to transplant human head from a living person to a donor corpse. Two surgeons challenged modern medicine and try to make new discoveries. It is believed that the head donor will be someone with a degenerative disease whose body is debilitating while the mind remains active. The body donor will likely be someone who died from a severe head injury but whose body remains unharmed.
A human head transplant was announced in 2017 by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero
First human head transplant
The researchers say they perfected the technique on mice, a dog, a monkey and, in Lately, human corpse. The first human head transplant was planned to take place in 2017 in Europe. However, Canavero moved the operation to China because no American or European institute allowed such a transplant. This issue is very strictly regulated by Western bioethicists. It is believed that Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to return China to greatness by providing a home for such cutting-edge work.
In a telephone interview with USA TODAY, Canavero condemned the reluctance of the United States or Europe to carry out the operation. “No American medical school or center is pursuing this, and the US government does not want to support me,” he said.
The human head transplant experiment was met, to put it mildly, with considerable skepticism. Critics cite a lack of adequate preliminary and animal studies, a lack of published literature on the techniques and their results, unexplored ethical issues, and the circus atmosphere encouraged by Canavero. Many also worry about the origin of the donor body. The question has been raised more than once that China uses the organs of executed prisoners for transplantation.
Some bioethicists argue that it is necessary to simply ignore this topic so as not to contribute to the “world circus.” However, we cannot simply deny reality. Canavero and Wren may not have succeeded in attempting a live human head transplant, but they certainly won't be the last to attempt a head transplant. For this reason, it is very important to consider the ethical implications of such an attempt in advance.
Canavero presents human head transplant as natural next step in a transplant success story. Indeed, this story would be simply remarkable: people live for many years with donated lungs, livers, hearts, kidneys and other internal organs.
2017 marked the anniversary of the oldest living one given by a father to his daughter; both are alive and well 50 years later. Just recently we saw successfully transplanted arms, legs and another. The first completely successful one occurred in 2014, as well as the first live birth to a woman with a transplanted uterus.
While face and penis transplants are difficult (many still fail), head and body transplants present a whole new level of difficulty.
History of head transplant
The issue of head transplantation was first raised in the early 1900s. However, transplant surgery at that time faced many problems. The problem that vascular surgeons faced was that it was impossible to cut and then connect the damaged vessel and subsequently restore blood flow without interrupting circulation.
In 1908, Carrel and American physiologist, Dr. Charles Guthrie, performed the first dog head transplant. They attached one dog's head to the neck of another dog, connecting arteries so that blood flowed first to the decapitated head and then to the recipient's head. The severed head was without blood flow for approximately 20 minutes, and while the dog demonstrated auditory, visual, skin reflexes and reflexive movements, early dates After the operation, her condition only worsened, and she was euthanized a few hours later.
Although their work on head transplantation was not particularly successful, Carrel and Guthrie made significant contributions to the understanding of the field of vascular anastomotic transplantation. In 1912 they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work.
Another milestone in the history of head transplantation was achieved in the 1950s thanks to the work of Soviet scientist and surgeon Dr. Vladimir Demikhov. Like his predecessors, Carrel and Guthrie, Demikhov made notable contributions to the field of transplant surgery, especially thoracic surgery. He improved the methods available at the time for maintaining vascular nutrition during organ transplantation and was able to perform the first successful coronary artery bypass graft surgery in dogs in 1953. Four dogs survived for more than 2 years after surgery.
In 1954, Demikhov also attempted dog head transplants. Demikhov's dogs showed more functional abilities than Guthrie's and Carrel's dogs and were able to move, see and lap water. A step-by-step documentation of Demikhov's protocol, published in 1959, shows how his team carefully preserved the blood supply to the donor dog's lungs and heart.
Two-headed dog from Demikhov's experiment
Demikhov showed that dogs can live after such an operation. However, most dogs lived only a few days. A maximum survival rate of 29 days was achieved, which is more than in the Guthrie and Carrel experiment. This survival was due to the recipient's immune response to the donor. At this time, no effective immunosuppressive drugs were used, which could have changed the results of the studies.
In 1965, American neurosurgeon Robert White also attempted a head transplant. His goal was to perform a brain transplant on an isolated body, contrary to Guthrie and Demikhov, who transplanted the entire top part dogs, not just isolated brains. This required him to create various methods perfusion.
Maintaining blood flow to the isolated brain was the most big problem for Robert White. He created vascular loops to maintain anastomoses between the internal maxillary and internal carotid artery donor dog. This system was called "autoperfusion" because it allowed the brain to be perfused by its own carotid system even after it was severed on the second body cervical vertebra. The brain was then located between jugular vein and the recipient's carotid artery. Using these perfusion techniques, White was able to successfully transplant six brains into the cervical vasculature of six large canine recipients. The dogs survived between 6 and 2 days.
With continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring, White monitored the viability of the transplanted brain tissue and compared the activity of the graft brain with that of the recipient's brain. Moreover, using an implantable recording module, it also monitored the metabolic state of the brain by measuring oxygen and glucose consumption and demonstrated that after surgery, the transplanted brains were in a highly efficient metabolic state, another sign of the functional success of the transplant.
Head transplant for Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov
Back in 2015, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero proposed performing the first living human head transplant as early as 2017. To prove that the procedure would be possible, he reconstructed the severed spinal cord of a dog and attached the head of a mouse to the body of a rat. He even managed to find a volunteer in Valery Spiridonov, but it appears that the operation may not be moving forward as originally planned.
Doctors from all over the world claim that the operation is doomed to failure, and even if Spiridonov survives, he will not live a happy life.
Dr. Hunt Batjer, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, said: “I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
Valery Spiridonov volunteered to undergo the world's first full head transplant, which was to be performed by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, but after a while he changed his mind. Spiridonov suffered from severe muscle atrophy and was a wheelchair user all his life.
Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian man, volunteered to complete this surgical procedure because he believes that a head transplant will improve his quality of life. Valery was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This genetic disorder causes his muscles to break down and kills nerve cells in his spinal cord and brain. There is currently no known treatment.
How did the story of a head transplant for a Russian programmer end?
Valery recently announced that he would not undergo the procedure because the doctor could not promise him what he so wanted: that he would walk again and be able to have a normal life. Moreover, Sergio Canavero said that the volunteer may not survive the operation.
Considering that I can't rely on my Italian colleague, I have to take my health into my own hands. Fortunately, there is a fairly well-proven procedure for cases like mine, where a steel implant is used to support the spine in a straight position. – said Valery Spiridonov
A Russian volunteer will now seek alternative spine surgery to improve his life, rather than undergoing an experimental procedure that has been criticized by several researchers in the scientific community.
Early 2018 foreign media regularly and very actively posted news about Russian volunteer Valery Spiridonov. However, after refusing the operation, their interest in the disabled person subsided.
Human head transplantation is a very complex procedure as it requires reconnection of the spine. After the operation it is necessary to manage immune system to prevent the head from being rejected from the donor body.
Some interesting facts:
- Spiridonov has already won. Doctors told him that he should have died from the disease several years ago.
- Valery works from home in Vladimir, about 180 kilometers east of Moscow, running an educational software business.
- Spiridonov is terminally ill. He is tied to wheelchair due to Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. A genetic disorder that causes motor neurons to die. The disease has limited his movements; to feed himself, he operates a joystick on a wheelchair.
- Spiridonov is not the only person who has volunteered to become the first potentially successful head transplant patient. Nearly a dozen others, including a man whose body is full of tumors, asked doctors to go first.
- Spiridonov came up with a new way to help finance the operation; according to preliminary estimates, the cost of the operation was between 10 and 100 million US dollars. He began selling hats, T-shirts, mugs and iPhone cases, all featuring the head on the new body.
Head transplant in China
In December 2017, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero performed the first head transplant from two cadaveric donors in China. With this procedure, he attempted to make spinal fusion (taking an entire human head and attaching it to a donor body) a reality and declared that the operation was a success.
Many scientists from around the world believe that successful transplant the human head that Canavero declared is actually a failure! This is argued by the fact that no actual results of human head transplantation after transplantation have been shown to the public. Sergio Canavero gained a reputation in wide circles as a swindler and populist.
Dr. Canavero did the head transplant with another doctor named Xiaoping Ren from Harbin Medical University, a neurosurgeon from China who successfully grafted a head onto a monkey's body last year. Canavero and Dr. Ren were not the only ones involved in this operation. More than 100 doctors and nurses were on standby for the procedure over 18 hours. Answering a question from journalists “how much does a head transplant cost,” Canavero said that this procedure cost more than 100 million US dollars.
The first head transplant in China was successful. The operation on human corpses has been completed. We had a head transplant operation, no matter what anyone says! – Canavero said at a conference in Vienna. He said an 18-hour operation on two cadavers showed it was possible to repair the spinal cord and blood vessels.
Sergio Canavero and Xiaoping Ren
Canavero has since been called the "Dr. Frankenstein of medicine" and has been criticized for his actions. You could say that Sergio Canavero is a man who plays God or wants to cheat death.
Ren and Canavero hope their invention could one day help patients suffering from paralysis and spinal cord injuries to walk again.
These patients currently do not have good strategies, their mortality rate is very high. So I'm trying to promote this technique to help these patients,” Professor Ren told CNBC. “This is my main strategy for the future.”
If doctors actually performed a head transplant on a person (a living recipient), it would be a breakthrough in the field of transplantology. Such a successful operation could mean saving terminally ill patients, as well as enabling people with spinal cord injuries to walk again.
Ian Schnapp, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said: “Despite Professor Canavero's enthusiasm, I cannot imagine that ethics committees at any reputable research or clinical institution will give the green light to live human head transplants in the foreseeable future... Indeed, an attempt to do so , considering Current state technology would be nothing less than a crime.
Any innovative procedure will undoubtedly face objections and skepticism, and requires a leap of faith. Although this all seems impossible, a human head transplant would revolutionize the field of medicine if successful.
Ethical issues
Some doctors say the chances of success are so low that attempting a head transplant would be tantamount to murder. But even if it were feasible, even if we could connect the head and body and have a living person at the end, this is only the beginning of ethical questions about the procedure of creating a hybrid life.
If we transplanted your head onto my body, who would it be? In the West, we tend to think that who you are - your thoughts, memories, emotions - resides entirely in your brain. Since the resulting hybrid has its own brain, we take it as an axiom that this person will be you.
But there are many reasons to worry that such a conclusion is premature.
First, our brain is constantly monitoring, reacting and adapting to our body. A completely new body would force the brain to engage in a massive reorientation of all its new inputs, which could, over time, change the fundamental nature and connecting pathways of the brain (what scientists call the “connect”).
Dr. Sergio Canavero said at a conference in Vienna that the cadaveric head transplant was successful.
The brain will not be the same as it was before, still attached to the body. We don't know exactly how it will change you, your sense of self, your memories, your connection to the world - we only know that it will.
Second, neither scientists nor philosophers have a clear understanding of how the body contributes to our essential sense of self.
The second largest nerve cluster in our body, after the brain, is the bundle in our gut (technically called the enteric nervous system). The ENS is often described as the “second brain” and is so vast that it can operate independently of our brain; that is, he can make his own “decisions” without the participation of the brain. In fact, the enteric nervous system uses the same neurotransmitters as the brain.
You may have heard of serotonin, which may play a role in regulating our moods. Well, about 95 percent of the serotonin in the body is produced in the gut, not in the brain! We know that the ENS has a strong influence on our emotional states, but we don't understand its full role in defining who we are, how we feel and how we behave.
Moreover, there has recently been an explosion in research into the human microbiome, the large collection of bacterial life that lives inside us; It turns out that we have more microorganisms in our bodies than in human cells. More than 500 species of bacteria live in the intestines, and they exact composition is different for each person.
There are other reasons to be concerned about a head transplant. The United States suffers from a severe shortage of donor organs. The average wait time for a kidney transplant is five years, a liver transplant is 11 months, and a pancreas transplant is two years. One corpse can donate two kidneys, as well as a heart, liver, pancreas and possibly other organs. Using the entire body for a single head transplant with slim chances of success is unethical.
Canavero estimates the cost of the world's first human head transplant to be $100 million. How much good can be done with such funds? It's actually not that hard to calculate!
When and if it becomes possible to repair severed spinal cords, this revolutionary advance should be aimed primarily at the many thousands of people who suffer paralysis as a result of a severed or injured spinal cord.
There are also unresolved legal issues. Who is a hybrid person legally? Is the legal person the “head” or the “body”? The body makes up more than 80 percent of the mass, so it is more of a donor than a recipient. Who legally will the children and spouses of the donor be to the recipient? After all, the body of their relative will live, but with a “different head.”
The story of head transplants does not end here; on the contrary, new facts, questions, and problems emerge every day.
The world's first human head transplant will take place in China. This was announced by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who is going to perform this unique operation. Previously Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. But now, apparently, he decided to change plans.
30-year-old Valery Spiridonov has a complex genetic disease - spinal muscular atrophy. He is practically unable to move. Everyone expected that Valery would become the first person in history to receive a body transplant. Or the head; there is no consensus among doctors on what to call this transplant. He had been preparing for the most complex and so far unique operation of its kind since 2015.
"I'm not trying to commit some sophisticated method of suicide. No, it's not like that. I'm happy with what I have. And I have confidence that everyone understands what they're doing. It's just that someone technically should be the first. Why not me?" - he said.
The transplant was to be performed by a neurosurgeon from Italy, Sergio Canavero. Spiridonov flew to the USA to meet with him after online consultations.
And now, six months before the planned operation, news comes: the first patient to undergo a head transplant will not be a Russian, but a citizen of the People's Republic of China. The official reason is as follows: they decided to carry out the operation in China, and the donor and recipient must belong to the same race.
“We will have to look for donors among local residents. And we cannot give snow-white Valeria the body of a person of a different race. We cannot yet name the new candidate. We are in the process of choosing,” said Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon.
However, many are sure that it is more a matter of funding and national prestige. In China, head transplant surgery is funded at the government level. A separate clinic in Harbin will be allocated for this. Dozens of local doctors will help the Italian neurosurgeon. And the patient’s choice will most likely also fall on a citizen of the People’s Republic of China.
“The Chinese decided to undertake this operation because they want to win the Nobel Prize and establish their country as an engine of scientific progress. This is a kind of new space race,” Canavero is sure.
The operation is expected to last about 36 hours and cost $15 million. Once frozen, the heads will be separated from the bodies. And the recipient's head will be attached to the donor's body using special biological glue. Polyethylene glycol will be injected into the affected areas of the spinal cord; with its help, it has already been possible to restore connections between thousands of neurons in animals.
Trial operations on patients in a state of clinical death are planned for the fall of 2017. This is necessary to hone the technique of surgical manipulations. Previously, Sergio Canavero had already managed to sew on a second head of a mouse and transplant the head of a monkey. However, the monkey was euthanized 20 hours after the operation. And the transplanted mouse head did not send impulses to other parts of the body.
And many neurosurgeons still doubt that when performing an operation on a person it will actually be possible to successfully fuse the spinal cord and preserve the vital functions of the brain.
“Technically, there are many problems with stitching together many vessels, nerves, bones. But these are solvable options. The main problem is how to make impulses from the head through the stitched spinal cord pass down and back? Unfortunately, this technique does not work yet, there is no such technique ", says the Russian doctor.
The Italian surgeon himself estimates the chances of success as 90 percent. And I am sure that this will be a breakthrough in the field of transplantation, which will give a chance of life to people with many serious diseases - from spinal muscular atrophy to currently incurable forms of cancer.
