A new and rather stunning operation being considered by scientists in China involves performing full-body transplants. This would replace every part of the human body in order to help paralytic patients.
Dr. Xiaoping Ren, an orthopedic surgeon at Harbin Medical University in China, who was involved in the first-hand transplant in the U.S. in 1999, said that he is gathering a team to take up the tests for the study. He has already tried out his ideas on mice and cadavers. However, the mice lived for just a day after the experiment.
Experts are firm that it is not possible to sever and then reconnect a spinal cord. Many others say that the procedure is unethical and "reckless". It is possible for the recipient to die if the surgery fails.
Hence, many doctors have slammed Ren's idea for an operation. They call it impossible.
Dr. Huang Jiefu, a former deputy minister of health in China, said in an interview in November that when the spine is cut, the neurons "cannot be reconnected, so it's scientifically impossible."
"Ethically it's impossible," Dr. Huang added. "How can you put one person's head on another's body?"
His plan is to "remove two heads from two bodies, connect the blood vessels of the body of the deceased donor and the recipient's head, insert a metal plate to stabilize the new neck, bathe the spinal cord nerve endings in a gluelike substance to aid regrowth and finally sew up the skin."
"For most people, it's at best premature and at worst reckless," said Dr. James L. Bernat, a professor of neurology and medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College.
China is accused of disproportionate national ambition and state funding that refuses to give priority to ethics and instead looks at results.
"The Chinese system is not transparent in any way," said Arthur L. Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University. "I do not trust Chinese bioethical deliberation or policy. Add healthy doses of politics, national pride, and entrepreneurship, and it is tough to know what is going on."
Even Chinese scientists are concerned.
"I don't want to see China's scholars, transplant doctors, and scientists deepening the impression that people have of us internationally, that when Chinese people do things they have no bottom line - that anything goes," said Cong Yali, a medical ethicist at Peking University, referring to Dr. Ren's plans.
