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 ...
I pity the guy and his condition. It sounds like a horrible disease.
Just from a logistics point of view is what’s the point? To just be a “head on a stick” to keep you alive? There just isn’t a way to connect the nerves to have a functioning body. The body will be hooked up to ever machine possible to keep it alive. And with his failing body now it will be the same way.
That’s why he wants to try it. He has nothing left to lose.................
"...can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?"
lol
The donor body probably had it’s brains blown out or other similar traumatic head injury. That’s the crux of the problem though, not many people shoot themselves in the head in the ER...
Obviously the first person to undergo this procedure should really be someone who suffered accidental decapitation.
I remember reading a short Sci-fi story in the 1970s where a guy is put in suspended animation and awakes in the future. He's in a hospital room, where windows blow out due to Super Sonic jets taking off, and they are replaced immediately by an automated system. He starts talking to the man in the room with him.
After a short while the man in the room with him says that the man who awoke from suspended animation was being prepped for heart surgery.
The man, quite surprised, stated there was nothing wrong with his heart.
The man in the room tells him, "No, but there's something wrong with mine." and the story ends.
As likely to be successful as any attempt to remove Obama’s head from his ass.
The spinal reattachment tech is being tested now I believe. I think there are 2 or 3 people in Belgium recovering from severed spinal cords as we type.
We're doing it to annoy ISIS. :)
I recall reading earlier this year that they have started to learn how to fix severed spines in mice.
This is prolly getting Bruce Jenner excited..?
They got to human trials in the EU already?! Wow.
The head that gets attached to someone else’s body is not going to recognize the other guy’s tackle when it wakes up.
And which wife will he belong to? This could get complicated. Suppose both women want joint ownership? Ai-yai-yai! Will the surviving head’s wife have a problem with the strange body’s tackle?
“but immune-suppressent drugs are now available.....”
Those drugs invite a whole new set of problems - a supressed immune system allows all sorts of diseases to enter the body unopposed. Using a broad spectrum of antibiotics to fight those invite yet more problems. The likeliest causes of death may be MRSA infections, organs shutting down and pneumonia. For a number of reasons, I think the odds against surviving more than a few weeks are stupendous.
So far, men of science are incapable of creating even a living amoeba from scratch. Successful head transplants might be a great deal more complicated than that.
That makes everything better.
lol
Ideally we could genetically engineer a “universal donor human cell” that would not be rejected or reject donor tissue that could be cultured and grown into either headless bodies via those genes being surpressed... or using 3D bio printing to print whole blank donor bodies that could be customized to match a persons former body.
The head transplant part is a vital piece to this puzzle.
I agree.
Bender may have a problem with this.
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