First Human Head Transplant
The head transplant, placing a person’s head, brain, and spinal cord on a new body is expected to be achieved in 2030
The former NHS neurosurgeon said that head transplantation-placing a person’s head, brain, and spinal cord on a new body is expected to be achieved in 2030. This can save countless lives and may pave the way for immortality. This operation was considered impossible because it would involve cutting off the spinal cord and reconnecting it to a new person. During this period, the problem that doctors need to face is how to keep the brain to be transplanted alive.
However, Dr. Bruce Matthew, the former clinical director of neurosurgery at the NHS Trust Fund of the University of Hull Teaching Hospital England, believes that the technology may be realized soon, which will be a miraculous feat.
Dr. Matthew told the media: “In the beginning, our intention came from the idea of brainstorming. It seemed rather stupid. We must know that the spinal cord is one of the most esoteric organs in the human body. There is currently no way to disconnect and reconnect the brain and spinal cord, And this is one of the most difficult bottlenecks in head transplant surgery. But then I realized that we had entered into a misunderstanding. If the brain and spinal cord are kept together when transplanting the brain, the head transplant can be successful. The idea of severing the spinal cord is very absurd.”
He further added that “We will remove the spine first, so that the entire brain, spinal cord, and lumbosacral region can be put into a new body. To completely remove the dura mater (the protective membrane of the spinal cord) without making a hole Difficult, this requires some technological progress, but it may happen in the next 10 years.”
However, this potential operation did sound some ethical alarm bells
In April 2015, computer scientist Valery Spiridonov announced that he would be the first volunteer to undergo a head transplant.
The president of the American Association of Neurosurgeons, Dr. Hunter Batjer, has previously stated that transplantation may lead to the worst fate imaginable.
He said: “I don’t want anyone to do this, and I won’t allow anyone to do this to me, because there are many things worse than death.”
In April 2015, computer scientist Valery Spiridonov got into a wheelchair due to muscular dystrophy. One day he would die due to the disease. He announced that he would be the first to receive a head transplant. Volunteers for surgery.
Since experts have been working hard to study what needs to be done to ensure the survival of the patient, the operation has been delayed and will be in charge of the neurosurgeon Dr. Sergio Canavero, who is called the Frankenstein in real life.
Dr. Canavero previously declared that he was ready for surgery and insisted that he had successfully cut and reconnected the spinal cords of nine mice.
Dr. Canavero and a team of Chinese doctors cut the spinal cords of 15 mice and tried to reconnect the spinal cords of 9 of them. The other 6 mice were used as comparative test subjects.
The team used polyethylene glycol found in drugs and polyethylene glycol found in industrial processes to fix the spinal cord while trying to minimize blood loss.
According to a report in the journal “Central Nervous Science and Therapeutics”, all mice that had their heads changed survived an amazing 30 days after the experiment.
These mice were obviously able to walk again and resume basic motor functions, and the researchers said that two of them returned to a “basically normal” state.
However, we must know that there are still big differences between humans and mice, and there must be a long way to go before the human body “head-changing” surgery.
Regardless of ethical constraints, I believe that head replacement surgery will definitely become a reality shortly because the development of human technology will never be stagnated due to ethical constraints.
