Posted on 06/10/2015 2:10:25 PM PDT by Red Badger
The man volunteering to be the guinea pig for pioneering head transplant surgery is flying to America this week to meet for the first time the doctor intending to give him a new body.
Russian Valery Spiridonov will appear at a major medical conference in Annapolis with Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who hopes to convince the medical establishment that his techniques are on the brink of viability.
But he prepared to fly to New York today, one of Moscow's top surgeons branded the £9.8million ($15million) head transplant plan 'reckless', claiming the medic - who has been labelled Dr Frankenstein by critics - is nowhere near being ready to undertake such a complex operation.
Spiridonov, a 30-year-old sufferer of Werdnig-Hoffman disease, has publicly volunteered to be first patient, saying he is aware of the risks.
He told MailOnline: 'I am flying to New York and then will go to Annapolis to take part in the scientific conference with the surgeon Sergio Canavero.
'We will be together on stage. It will be a joint presentation. I will speak for myself.
'I do hope that my trip and my participation in this conference will help to push the idea of this surgery, to persuade the medical world and to make sure we have support from the scientific community.'
Spiridonov, seen as a child in new pictures released to Mailonline, will tell the gathering that he hopes his head will be transplanted onto a physically fit body within two years. Such surgery would be a medical sensation. ....
'The place of the surgery will very much depend on how this conference goes. Preferably, the operation would be done in the USA.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
EXCLUSIVE: 'I'm not going crazy to cut my head off here': Disabled ‘guinea pig’ for first full HEAD transplant to meet surgeon for first time this week and insists he'll only go under knife when it is '99% possible'
Journey: Valery Spiridonov, pictured at Moscow airport on Wednesday, is flying the New York to finally meet the man who may one day cut his head off and reattach it to another person's body
I wish him well.....................
this will not end well
For his sake I hope it does.....................
It was done in Russian with dogs in the mid-century and done again with monkeys in Cleveland at the end of the 20th century.
Complications in the USSR were because of infection (animals lived for upwards of a week and were not on artificial organ machines).
I don’t know enough about the Cleveland experiments to know how long they lived.
Working through the possibilities if this really works, which it has for a few days on smaller animals...How does the body and head get over tissue rejection? Would the head reject the body or vice versa?
The x files movie I want to believe. One of the best for Mulder and Scully.
Maybe the technology has advanced to the 99% probability of survival stage.
He has nothing to lose....................
Wasn't there a high profile face transplant? Sounds like the tissue was not rejected.
Might be a case of both, but immune-suppressent drugs are now available.................
At the beginning of the procedure there are two living humans. At the end there is one. Explain to me why this is not killing one of them?
its worked but the animals were all paralyzed. that is the hard part. and the poor monkey was freaking out until it died.
if he can reattach the spinal cord, it makes me wonder why more paralyzed cant be helped.
We are messing with stuff that we should not.
They do not know how to fix severed brain stem-spinal columns
One, of course, must be declared brain dead, from some accident or other non-disease cause. They can keep the body ‘alive’ until the operation begins.....................
The body isn’t the entire problem. Some of it is in the head. Putting a new body on the head won’t solve the problem.
His doesn’t work now and will get worse, so he hasn’t got a lot to lose either way....................
Dead man walking^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrolling.
I would truly love for this to work, but I think it won’t. They are both brave for trying.
A little over a week; I had the pleasure of working at Case Western (where the experiments were done) with of one of the scientists who participated. He had good stories. He felt they went too far, and lots of regrets about their work (and nightmares about the monkeys), but I don't believe Dr. White (the actual project lead, and a true genius and wonderful man) had any regrets, save they weren't able to take it further.
There are a number of people in DC I'd like the surgeon to practice on first ...
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