The following scenario may sound like a scene from a horror movie, but an Italian doctor believes that transplanting a head onto a human body could soon become a reality, reports the British website Mirror.
Dr. Sergio Canverro, a renowned Italian surgeon, is already assembling a team of surgeons with the goal of achieving a full operation in 2017. The head transplant will effectively cure terminally ill patients suffering from cancer and severe muscle diseases.
Dr. Canavero published an article in which he outlines his challenging plan.
According to the plan, the donor body and the recipient head will be cooled to extend the life of their cells without oxygen during the surgery.
Next, the recipient's neck will be cut, and so will his blood vessels, tied with tiny threads, and connected to the new body [of the donor] using a chemical called polyethylene glycol. Carnarvon believes that the brain will be able to communicate with the nerves in the donor's spinal cord, and thus the person will essentially receive a 'new body,' free of disease.
Sounds simple? Not entirely. After the surgery, the transplant recipient will spend four weeks in a coma – to strengthen the connections between the parts, and even then he will only be able to move his face. Only a year of physical therapy exercises will allow him to move the rest of his body.
This type of surgery was performed on a monkey in the 1970s but failed. However, scientists in China were able to perform a similar procedure on mice recently.
And what about the ethical problem?
Canverro is aware that not everyone accepts his ambitious project, and that some challenge the idea of "planting" a new human body, but he declares that as long as people are interested in it, he will continue his research.
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