An Italian surgeon made a fearless announcement of making the first human head transplant happen in two years.
The seemingly modern day Frankenstein procedure, called HEAVEN-GEMINI, will be performed by Sergio Canavero, a surgeon of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group (TANG) in Italy.
Canavero is aware of the challenges that the human head transplant has, such as reconnecting the severed spinal cord and the donor body rejecting the head. However, he said that he can now overcome these obstacles based on the success of the head transplant performed on rats.
According to the editorial published online, the human head transplant procedure will take around 36 hours and will involve 100 surgeons. Both the donor and the recipient's body temperatures will be dropped to an abnormally low temperature to prevent brain damage. The head will then be cut from the donor and attached to the recipient by fusing the spinal cord to the head. The recipient will be induced in a coma state for 4 weeks for recovery.
The Italian surgeon believes that despite ethical concerns, the human head transplant is needed to save the lives of people suffering from terminal diseases.
"The real stumbling block is the ethics," he said in an interview with the New Scientist. "Should this surgery be done at all? There are obviously going to be many people who disagree with it."
"If society doesn't want it, I won't do it. But if people don't want it, in the US or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else," he added. "I'm trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you."
Details of the procedure will be presented in June at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons' 39th Annual Conference in Annapolis, Md. Canavero hopes to attract surgeons to help him with the first human head transplant.
