Neurosurgeon to attempt world's first head transplant.
I have not as yet studied this in any detail as yet. but I had no idea that the Medical Profession was potentially so advanced..and the thoughts of this are beyond my imagination , and I wonder how this will effect the patients brain..or if the brain will be is also to be transplanted or if the new head contains another brain within its head.. :o
Patient will be 30-year-old Russian Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann, a muscle-wasting disease.
An Italian neurosurgeon has unveiled plans to perform the first human head transplant by the end of 2017.
Dr Sergio Canavero announced his plan at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons in the US state of Maryland on Friday, saying he believes he has a 90 percent chance of success.
He said his patient will be a 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, who has the muscle-wasting disease, Werdnig-Hoffmann.
"Of course there is a margin of risk, I cannot deny that," Canavero said.
"I made the announcement only when I was pretty sure I could do it."
Both men, who have been in regular contact through video chats, believe the controversial procedure is Spiridonov's best hope, the Reuters news agency reported.
"If it goes good, I think I will get rid of the limits which I have today and I will be more independent and this will much improve my life," Spiridonov said.
"We are making a huge step forward in science and I hope it will be OK."
Canavero is quick to point out that few with Werdnig-Hoffmann disease reach adulthood.
"He is a brave man and he is in horrible condition. You have to understand - for him, Western medicine has nothing to offer. Western medicine has failed."
Surgical team of 100
Canavero will need the support of his peers in order to move forward on the operation which could cost around $15m.
Cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Raymond Dieter, a former president of the International College Of Surgeons, said one of the biggest concerns with the procedure was keeping the brain alive during the surgery.
"When you think you are doing a heart transplant, or a kidney transplant, or a liver transplant, you have to cool those organs to give you a longer period of ... surgical time before you reconnect all the vessels and you start reperfusion," Dieter said.
RELATED: View more Al Jazeera Health content here
"We've seen several professors criticising Dr Canavero's work but you know, there was criticism for the first heart transplant as well and now it's commonplace."
The operation, which would require a team of more than 100 medical workers and could take 36 hours to complete, could take place in the US or China.
Canavero plans to carry out the procedure in December 2017.
"I prepared myself not only scientifically, but also psychologically which is equally important in order to tackle all of these attacks from several fronts, in order to justify what you want to do, why you want to do, you have to prepare yourself," Canavero said.
"This is a frontier, the final frontier. It's not space. This is it because it has implications that go well beyond religion, culture, the future, everything."
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/neurosurgeon-attempt-world-head-transplant-150613072123910.html
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Surgeon promising first human head transplant makes US pitch
An Italian neurosurgeon's project to undertake the first human head transplant has received a skeptical welcome in the United States, where he made a pitch to donors and fellow scientists.
Sergio Canavero, who leads the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, first announced his project in 2013, saying at the time that such a procedure could be possible as soon as 2016.
But this timeline seems extremely unlikely given the numerous obstacles and gaps in knowledge.
Canavero, who made a 2.5-hour presentation Friday at a conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons in Annapolis, Maryland, met for the first time there a man who volunteered for the world's first head transplant.
Russian-born Valery Spiridonov, 30, suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, which is a progressive and incurable wasting ailment. He was among the 150-some conference participants.
Invited to speak at the start of the conference, Canavero described at length how he would mend a severed spinal cord -- a crucial factor in any such surgery -- and described advances in the field, especially on animals.
The secret is to use a nano blade to cut the cord, then polyethylene glycol and an electrical current to accelerate the reconnection of severed nerve fibers.
But he admitted his knowledge was incomplete and didn't go into much detail about the profusion of other major problems that could be expected with such an unfathomably drastic operation.
Among those issues is how to maintain and restore blood flow to the brain, or how to reconnect the parasympathetic nervous system, a key component of an organism's automatic functions.
- 'Be Americans' -
Marc Stevens, an orthopedic surgeon from Smithfield, North Carolina who was attending the conference, said Canavero's presentation was intriguing but more research should be done on healing spinal cord injuries instead of attempting a head transplant.
Jerry Silver, a Case Western Reserve University neurosciences professor, cautioned that spinal reconnection science touted by Canavero was far from ready, noting the difficulties involved in reattaching the vagus nerve, which controls a variety of functions including digestion and heart rates.
At the end of his presentation, Canavero asked his US peers for help -- both with the science and the cash needed for the project.
"I did my homework and now I am asking you to help," he said.
"Let's suspend all judgment. What you have been taught is wrong.
"I need your help and I need your assistance. Be Americans," he added.
Likening his project to former president John F. Kennedy's Apollo mission to send men to the moon in the 1960s, he called on "billionaires like Bill Gates to give money for this project."
He has previously said he needed about $100 million for his work.
Animal experiments in the 1970s in America saw Robert White transplant heads on monkeys, but he was unable to restore spinal function and the creatures soon died.
http://news.yahoo.com/surgeon-promising-first-human-head-transplant-makes-us-201123086.html
The medical community hasn't yet figured out how to restore function to people with spinal cord injuries. How is a transplanted head going to communicate with its new body?
Shasta
Quote from: Shasta56 on June 14, 2015, 07:58:42 PM
How is a transplanted head going to communicate with its new body?
Bluetooth? ;D
Quote from: Shasta56 on June 14, 2015, 07:58:42 PM
The medical community hasn't yet figured out how to restore function to people with spinal cord injuries. How is a transplanted head going to communicate with its new body?
Shasta
Good question... but
The Japanese have invented Robot legs that somehow sense the body commands to move the legs so people that cannot walk now can. I have not had time to fully research this yet but my Foot doctor is interested in this program.
The company is just starting to get medical facilities to get them currently at $2,000 a month rental... So I told them I would help them get set up for a free pair LOL
::)
Point is SOMEHOW they are sensing the thoughts (or nerve pulses) Don't know yet
Gonna watch the head surgery thing closely See if it is even real.
The legs... the company name is CYBERDYNE LMAO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWw6LSuRCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWw6LSuRCo
Quote from: zorgon on June 14, 2015, 09:49:16 PM
Point is SOMEHOW they are sensing the thoughts (or nerve pulses) Don't know yet
They "read" the electric signals sent by the brain to the muscles and make the equivalent movement to the robotic legs, amplifying the force of the person's muscles.
I think Craig Hospital has been doing some work with exo-skeleton devices. I know Spalding does gait training with spinal cord injury patients. Neither of those programs though, negates the long term effects of spinal cord injury. And mobility is just one concern in that area.
Shasta
It may take a while to try and absorb the theories behind this as to me there is just far too many very complex things that would have to be accounted for ..with many individual parts to it, that I don't think that I/we may have even been made aware of as yet.
Just based on some of your comments..with the complexities associated with them suggest that would make the whole task of doing a head transplant seem to have so many other challenges one would think that we do not have the technology / abilities to do such a operation.
Also it seems to be something that is so advanced compared to other medical technology that we are probably more aware off.
Something like this would make me question have they obtained something like advanced ET technology to have developed this in what seems rather a short time frame..
or is it a type of Dr Frankenstein operation .
with what seems a new head sown or bolted onto another body.. :o :P
(http://www.cjnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/frankenstein.jpg)
:)
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpIhthpnZShsSj_iZfntik4CmXAhP73iPLT2nwIdLvJMqaaTEAfg)
I just cannot as yet imagine having ones head removed in the 1st place and surviving, let alone have another head transplanted as a replacement.. and is that to have someone else's brain in the transplanted head... or are they some how.. and I have NO idea HOW... keeping the patients brain alive from the removed head of the patient..and somehow connecting it to the transplanted head...
or are they transplanting the head with someone else's brain as well..
If they transplant with another brain as well...
That suggest to some , I am sure that the patient mentally becomes someone else.
I can not see any way that they could put a brain from a removed head into a replaced head without doing it some permanent damage...
I really cannot imagine the whole thing being possible...
I still have to take time to try and study some of this to see if the articles etc may answer some of these queries..