A head transplant is not to be confused with a brain transplant. Brain transplants have been successfully completed on various occasions and involve the surgical removal and transfer of a brain from one person (or organism) to another. A head transplant, however, involves decapitating the patient and surgically and medically transferring the whole head from one body to another.
Though head transplants have been successful on animals, it has only happened in a few select instances, and it has not yet been attempted on humans. But that is about to change.
Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian man, has recently volunteered to undergo the world’s first human head transplant. Spiridonov suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disorder, a disease that causes one’s muscles to slowly deteriorate. Spiridonov is currently confined to a wheelchair and only has one leg. He has voluntarily agreed to undergo the first head transplant, as he believes, if successful, it will give him and many others a chance at life again.
The research behind the operation requires a great deal of funding, which Spiridonov is in the process of obtaining.
“If I don’t try this out, my fate will be very sad. With every year my situation is getting worse,” he told the Central European News. “My decision is final, and I do not plan to change my mind.”
Public knowledge of the actual procedure includes that Spiridonov’s new body will be taken from “a brain-dead but otherwise healthy donor,” and his brain will be cooled t to prolong the time brain cells can survive without oxygen. His spinal cord will be cut with an extremely sharp scalpel, and the head will be reconnected to the new body and spinal cord with “a special biological glue.”
The head transplant is an estimated 36-hour-long, $11 million procedure. Just to complete the transplant, over 150 doctors and nurses will be needed. Should it go wrong, doctors say the outcome may be even worse than death. The physical transplant itself may be successful, but nerves could reconnect incorrectly or reject the transplant, and Spiridonov’s whole new body might shut down, quickly lead to death, or act in extremely dangerous ways.
This ambitious goal of Dr. Sergio Canavero, the surgeon who plans to perform the transplant, has also been praised and criticized by many. Just having the operation done will give insight into medicine to which we have never had access before. However, others argue that we simply do not have the resources or knowledge to safely attempt or even attempt the transplant at all. While animal head transplants have been successful, the human body is a much more complex system and reacts in ways that cannot be predicted based on animal research.
Regardless of the outcome, Valery Spiridonov is prepared to live or die trying in hopes of a better future for himself and society. Would you give up your head for science?