Surgeon: First Human Head Transplant May Be Just Two Years Away 210
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Michelle Star writes at C/net that Surgeon Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes he has developed a technique to remove the head from a non-functioning body and transplant it onto the healthy body. According to Canavero's paper published in Surgical Neurology International, first, both the transplant head and the donor body need to be cooled in order to slow cell death. Then, the neck of both would be cut and the major blood vessels linked with tubes. Finally, the spinal cords would be severed, with as clean a cut as possible. Joining the spinal cords, with the tightly packed nerves inside, is key. The plan involves flushing the area with polyethylene glycol, followed by several hours of injections of the same, a chemical that encourages the fat in cell membranes to mesh. The blood vessels, muscles and skin would then be sutured and the patient would be induced into a coma for several weeks to keep them from moving around; meanwhile, electrodes would stimulate the spine with electricity in an attempt to strengthen the new nerve connections.
Head transplants has been tried before. In 1970, Robert White led a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, that tried to transplant the head of one monkey on to the body of another. The surgeons stopped short of a full spinal cord transfer, so the monkey could not move its body. Despite Canavero's enthusiasm, many surgeons and neuroscientists believe massive technical hurdles push full body transplants into the distant future. The starkest problem is that no one knows how to reconnect spinal nerves and make them work again. "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," says Harry Goldsmith."
Head transplants has been tried before. In 1970, Robert White led a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, that tried to transplant the head of one monkey on to the body of another. The surgeons stopped short of a full spinal cord transfer, so the monkey could not move its body. Despite Canavero's enthusiasm, many surgeons and neuroscientists believe massive technical hurdles push full body transplants into the distant future. The starkest problem is that no one knows how to reconnect spinal nerves and make them work again. "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," says Harry Goldsmith."
Mark my words (Score:5, Interesting)
One day there will be trillions of humans on this planet, brains only, connected to a huge computer, and all dreaming of a body of their own.
Re:Just y'know... reconnect them spinal nerves (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem, even with a spinal cord cut intentionally and carefully, is that the surgeon has no way to know what connections in the head go to what connections in the body. Our nervous system-brain interface isn't a blueprinted thing at birth, our brains are actually born with no knowledge of the nerves running through our bodies. Our brains and bodies learn to interface with one another via "neural pruning." The brain is born with a bazillion* neurons, far more than it needs, but this is to account for all the possible nerve connections. Then, as the body grows, the nerves send signals to the brain, and those neurons that don't receive signals die off [mxplx.com], leaving the neurons that are properly wired into the body. In other words, our brains grow by natural selection [mxplx.com].
So how is a surgeon supposed to wire up a body to a brain that hasn't grown into that body? How is a brain pruned in childhood to interface with a body of certain dimensions and nerve-wirings supposed to interface with a body of completely different dimensions? It's not just a problem of lining up the nerves in the donor body with the right connections in the patient's head (a seemingly impossible task in and of itself), its the fact that the nerves in one person's body are going to be a very different set of wires than those in the the head. Many of the major nerves will match, but the signals from those nerves will be very different.
I wish this researcher the best of luck, and I imagine we will benefit tremendously from the new information we get from this research, but I suspect the final result will simply discover what the next challenge is to performing a successful head transplant.
*Technical term. :)
Proof this guy is crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
TLDR: Skip to the last paragraph for the best part. I didn't find it until I wrote all this up.
Since this is the 2nd Slashdot summary talking about this seemingly wacky procedure, I I decided to look into him a bit. Unfortunately the hard transplant stuff is 99.99% of what the search results return. He even gave a TED talk [tedxlimassol.com] on the topic of human consciousness. It is possible this guy is just trolling to sell his recent philosophy book since he left his job as a neurosurgeon.
Dr Canavero believes that the brain does not generate consciousness, but only filters it. His goal is to open the filter and see what lies beyond.
Perhaps the fields of neurosurgery and chiropractic draw people who have a fascination with human consciousness, like how some chiropractors think that they can cure any disease by cracking your back?
He claims to be part of the "Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group" which is "a Think Tank for the advancement of neuromodulation." It looks like that group is just him, and perhaps one colleage named "Vincenzo Bonicalzi MD" who co-authored a book with him in 2007. Together they wrote "Central Pain Syndrome: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Management" [amazon.com] But in 2014 Dr Canavero self published "Immortal: Why CONSCIOUSNESS is NOT in the BRAIN [amazon.com]". If you read the summary, it looks like your metaphysical philosophy.
The best part: Doctor Canavero and his "group" believe that through a combination of electrical stimulation and head transplants that he can create a society of perfect immortal beings [openscience.com].
Re:Just y'know... reconnect them spinal nerves (Score:5, Interesting)
So, here's the problem with that ... in addition to motor skills, your spinal column handles all of the autonomic stuff ... you know, heart beat, digestion, breathing, all that stuff which is controlled by the brain.
If you don't have those things connected properly, you will die. Plain and simple. This is leaps and bounds beyond physiotherapy. This is the entire function of your body which is controlled by the brain, which, last I checked, is pretty much all of it.
This isn't something where you can jam the two ends together and wait a few years until your brain remaps everything. Not unless you plan on keeping someone on extensive life support until the brain re-learns how to tell all of those other parts how to operate the body.
I just don't see this being viable, not unless you plan on spending zillions of dollars to keep someone alive until possibly the brain remaps some connections.
In which case this is a "treatment" which is only ever going to be viable for billionaires, because the resources to keep them alive in the mean time would be utterly staggering.
If all you're doing is designing a treatment for billionaires ... well, experiment on the billionaires then.