Science-Fiction meets medicine…Could doctors REALLY transplant a head onto a body in 2 years’ time?

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Could doctors REALLY transplant a head onto a body in 2 years’ time? Italian surgeon confident he can perform £7.5milllion operation to help paralysed patients like Christopher Reeve

Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero believes head transplants are possible
The techniques allows the patient’s head be grafted onto a healthy body
Paralysed patients and those with incurable illness could benefit
However, each operation will cost an estimated £7.5million to complete
Dr Canavero said both heads would be removed at the same time
He would then glue the patient’s head onto the donor’s body
By FIONA MACRAE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

It sounds like the plot of a bad horror film, but doctors are gearing up to do the world’s first head transplant.

Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero wants to take the head from someone with an incurable illness and graft it on to a healthy body.
He claims the first operation could be done in just two years’ time.

The £7.5million body swap would initially be used to give a new lease of life to paralysed people – including those with spinal cord injuries similar to those sustained by the late actor Christopher Reeve.

People with muscle-wasting diseases and those whose organs are riddled with cancer could also have their head put on a new body.

Those with motor neurone disease, the condition suffered by Stephen Hawking and portrayed by Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne in the film The Theory of Everything, might also benefit.

Eventually, the technique could be used to extend the life of healthy people in the ‘ultimate cosmetic surgery’.

Critics have described the plans as ‘pure fantasy’, but Dr Canavero claims all the necessary techniques exist and that he just needs to put them together. It is already more than 40 years since the first monkey head transplant and a basic operation on a mouse has just been done in China.

Dr Canavero already has a long list of potential patients, and will announce his plans at a top medical conference this summer in a bid to get the backing needed to do the first transplant in 2017.

The location has yet to be decided, but the surgeon, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, says he would love to do it in London.

The new body would come from a normal transplant donor who is brain dead. Both the donor and the patient would have their head severed from their spinal cord at the same time, using an ultra-sharp blade to give a clean cut. The patient’s head would then be moved on to the donor’s body and attached using a ‘glue’ called polyethylene glycol to fuse the two ends of the spinal cord together….More Here

 

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