First human head transplant could happen in two years

[n2doc]

A radical plan for transplanting a head onto someone else’s body is set to be announced. But is such ethically sensitive surgery even feasible?

IT'S heady stuff. The world's first attempt to transplant a human head will be launched this year at a surgical conference in the US. The move is a call to arms to get interested parties together to work towards the surgery.

The idea was first proposed in 2013 by Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy. He wants to use the surgery to extend the lives of people whose muscles and nerves have degenerated or whose organs are riddled with cancer. Now he claims the major hurdles, such as fusing the spinal cord and preventing the body's immune system from rejecting the head, are surmountable, and the surgery could be ready as early as 2017.

Canavero plans to announce the project at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, in June. Is society ready for such momentous surgery? And does the science even stand up?

The first successful head transplant, in which one head was replaced by another, was carried out in 1970. A team led by Robert White at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another. They didn't attempt to join the spinal cords, though, so the monkey couldn't move its body, but it was able to breathe with artificial assistance. The monkey lived for nine days until its immune system rejected the head. Although few head transplants have been carried out since, many of the surgical procedures involved have progressed. "I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible," says Canavero.


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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530103.700-first-human-head-transplant-could-happen-in-two-years.html?full=true#.VO4ZAynmHia

[PlanetaryOrbit]

1. Since your brain *IS* you........

........technically you'd be adding a body to a head, not adding a head to a body, right?


You go where your head goes.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. control the head....the body will follow!

[eShirl]

2. I'd rather think of it as a "body transplant"

you know, from the perspective of the head

[eShirl]

4. that poor little monkey...

[Mojorabbit]

12. That was my thought also. nt

[RKP5637]

18. My first thought too. The horror done to animals by humans is appalling! n/t

[marym625]

28. +1000

[SoLeftIAmRight]

39. + another 1000

We are monsters

[geek tragedy]

5. Or we could just accept that no one lives forever. nt

[pinboy3niner]

7. That's no way to get ahead. nt

[geek tragedy]

10. Booooo! nt

[Bobbie Jo]

13. Nobody believes that.

[Oktober]

8. Then why even have medicine?

What kind of attitude is that? Too much healing?

[geek tragedy]

15. There is preserving life and health, and then there is this.

People die because their bodies fail.

For those rare cases where everything but the head is in good working order, why would we not use the body for organs that could save 10 lives per established medical procedures rather than one superexpensive, untested procedure to save one person?

This leads down a bad place.

[randome]

19. Naw, it leads to more research and further discoveries, which is always a good thing.

I, for one, never saw the advantages of dying.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you think childhood is finished, you didn't do it right the first time.
Start over.[/center][/font][hr]

[geek tragedy]

23. Except that for someone to take advantage of a body transplant, someone else

needs to suffer a head trauma.

How often is a perfectly healthy body attached to an incapacitated head?

This is all very Frankenstein.

[randome]

24. However...

...the limited availability of healthy bodies might lead to the kind of research that gives us artificial means of keeping a head alive. Not like what we see in Futurama, of course.

I'll be first in line when an artificial body is perfected. Mother Nature goofed when she gave us expiration dates.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you think childhood is finished, you didn't do it right the first time.
Start over.[/center][/font][hr]

[Bosonic]

6. Surely a body transplant?

[marym625]

9. ew!

Sorry way too freaky for me.

Kochs must be funding this. They want to live long enough to spend all their money i.e. forever

[spanone]

11. 'heady stuff' bwahahahaaa

[randome]

14. Hats off to the researchers!

[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you think childhood is finished, you didn't do it right the first time.
Start over.[/center][/font][hr]

[cbayer]

16. Say what?? This makes no sense.

If they can't attach the spinal cord, and I can't possibly imagine how they could, this wouldn't do anything for those who have degenerative neuromuscular disorders. Those with advanced cancer might be candidates, as long as the cancer hadn't spread above their shoulders, but they are generally pretty debilitated.

Fun to speculate about, but hard to imagine happening.

[Capt. Obvious]

17. Dems should be safe for 2016 then

as Reagan's head attached to Lincoln's body won't be able to run until 2020

[PlanetaryOrbit]

22. Well, 2010's past..........

Do you mean 2100?

[randome]

26. Where have you been?

Time Lincoln can go pretty much anywhen he wants now!


[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you think childhood is finished, you didn't do it right the first time.
Start over.[/center][/font][hr]

[LeftishBrit]

34. Reagan's head might be particularly easy to manage, as it never had anything in it

[randome]

20. The obligatory post from that cinematic masterpiece, "The Thing With Two Heads".

[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you think childhood is finished, you didn't do it right the first time.
Start over.[/center][/font][hr]

[LeftinOH]

21. Or, you could get a 2nd head attached to you..to use for backup

[pinboy3niner]

25. If you wanna backup...

...the 2nd head should be facing the other way.

[longship]

29. This one's better...

It is utterly hoopy! (Just stay away from the Vogons.)

And, I'm buying rounds.

[hifiguy]

27. Shit, that means Cheney can theoretically live forever. nt

[Octafish]

31. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

[hifiguy]

32. LoL!

[Mosby]

30. this is only for the super rich.

[alcibiades_mystery]

33. Finally! A cure for baldness!

[Rex]

35. Is this a joke? How do you keep the head to transplant healthy and alive?

And why attach it to a organic body at all? Why not design something to attach the head to made out of titanium and a shit load of guns! Maybe a missile launcher or two and fuck the legs...make it tracks!

That poor monkey, the things we do to our cousins in the name of science. Better hope we lose all those records, before the Planet of the Apes shows up!

[vankuria]

36. I don't get it

By replacing someone's head, then wouldn't you essentially be making them into someone else? Or are you taking someone's head and putting it on another body???

This is all very creepy to me and that poor monkey, shame on them!

[Blue_Tires]

37. I'll volunteer

Put my head on Kate Upton's body so I can spend the rest of my life looking in the mirror and touching myself

[stevenleser]

38. If they can cut the spinal cord and reattach it so that it works correctly, wont paralyzed people be

made to be able to walk again by that same technology? I am speaking specifically of folks who are paraplegics or quadraplegics due to spinal cord injury.

Any docs on DU who can answer this?

[MrScorpio]

40. Futurama, here we come! nt

[NightWatcher]

41. For practice, the docs are going to first remove Boehner's head from his ass

Once they reattach that, they'll be ready.