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Surgeon: First Human Head Transplant May Be Just Two Years Away
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Michelle Star writes at C/net that Surgeon Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes he has developed a technique to remove the head from a non-functioning body and transplant it onto the healthy body. According to Canavero's paper published in Surgical Neurology International, first, both the transplant head and the donor body need to be cooled in order to slow cell death. Then, the neck of both would be cut and the major blood vessels linked with tubes. Finally, the spinal cords would be severed, with as clean a cut as possible. Joining the spinal cords, with the tightly packed nerves inside, is key. The plan involves flushing the area with polyethylene glycol, followed by several hours of injections of the same, a chemical that encourages the fat in cell membranes to mesh. The blood vessels, muscles and skin would then be sutured and the patient would be induced into a coma for several weeks to keep them from moving around; meanwhile, electrodes would stimulate the spine with electricity in an attempt to strengthen the new nerve connections.
Head transplants has been tried before. In 1970, Robert White led a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, that tried to transplant the head of one monkey on to the body of another. The surgeons stopped short of a full spinal cord transfer, so the monkey could not move its body. Despite Canavero's enthusiasm, many surgeons and neuroscientists believe massive technical hurdles push full body transplants into the distant future. The starkest problem is that no one knows how to reconnect spinal nerves and make them work again. "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," says Harry Goldsmith."
Head transplants has been tried before. In 1970, Robert White led a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US, that tried to transplant the head of one monkey on to the body of another. The surgeons stopped short of a full spinal cord transfer, so the monkey could not move its body. Despite Canavero's enthusiasm, many surgeons and neuroscientists believe massive technical hurdles push full body transplants into the distant future. The starkest problem is that no one knows how to reconnect spinal nerves and make them work again. "This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely," says Harry Goldsmith."
remove the head from a non-functioning body and transplant it onto the healthy body
Any word on removing non-functioning human heads and planting them on perfectly good bodies?
Just reconnect the spinal nerves? This is like saying interstellar spaceships are just two years away. Just connect the warp drive to the antimatter, and there you go.
Perhaps we should start by inventing a warp drive first? Or in this case, connecting severed spinal columns?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The spinal cord has to come with it, unless you don't mind that person stay paralyzed. And that's ignoring that the body's immune system will actively fight the new head until you die.
Now those aging "superstars" really can have those 20yo bodys they have always wanted....
The title should be "First full body transplant..."
It would serve 'em right. Or put the head on a pig.
the neck of both would be cut and the major blood vessels linked with tubes. Finally, the spinal cords would be severed, with as clean a cut as possible. Joining the spinal cords, with the tightly packed nerves inside, is key. The plan involves flushing the area with polyethylene glycol, followed by several hours of injections of the same, a chemical that encourages the fat in cell membranes to mesh
That's Frankenstein. Any one really believed TFA was a true story??
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Seriously, are the people who cleam this serious? I don't think so.
Now, if you're blue And you don't know where to go to Why don't you go where fashion sits...
Time to start raising my clone body for the head transplant when I'm old.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
What if a body is not available yet?
I personally want to wait for an android body for my human head... Do I owe Google money for that? I guess the body will have frequent upgrades...
Sorry, the coffee making me jittery (and the ADHD).
you know, we still don't know what is the soul. There's a lot of compelling stories about people with transplants taking on the personality to some lesser extent, of the organ donor, and when you consider brain activity is not restricted to that thing in your head - it begins to make sense, and the notion of a head transplant doesn't suggest the whole soul experience would transfer, and some would be lost with the body, but stranger too, would be the new experience of the "head" may feel very different with someone else's body attached - and by this I mean many of their emotions and decisions may be made quite differently to the expected personality. This will of course be blamed on the trauma of the operation, and it will be hailed as a complete success. but sooner or later, these transplantees will start talking of thoughts, feelings, and insights that they never had before, and a change in tastes both food, sexual, and more. Then we'll be back to asking why? - and you begin to realise the person we consider the head to be, is a fusion of two personalities. To some extent then, the body will have human rights that may conflict with the head. But that's a whole other discussion!
Saw this already in the 2nd X-Files movie.
One day there will be trillions of humans on this planet, brains only, connected to a huge computer, and all dreaming of a body of their own.
Saw 'Bones do this on TV. See, Spocks' brain was cut out by bimbos to run a planet-sized HVAC system. "Brain and brain, what is brain?" demanded the head bimbo when Kirk requested it back. Fortunately, 'Bones put a colander on his head and hooked the brain back up with a nerve hooker upper.
So, that's how it's done.
So are concentrated animal feeding operations and 99% of modern agriculture.
Could one be tried on the illiterate AMERICAN cretin who wrote the summary?
Still, who cares, it's all a bit of fun, isn't it, torturing animals to death. Who cares about the agonies and pain of others? Certainly nobody on Slashdot. The Slashdot sociopaths, unable to feel the suffering of others, because they're desperately trying to avoid feeling their own...
Problems with spinal reconnects? See subject. Better yet: Clone the body of the subject, lift the old brain out of the old body, put it into the newer clone and voila: Immortality is possible.
Please read "I Will Fear No Evil" to see how all this turns out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Its not like the entity that you are is going to go get a new head.
The first thing they need to do is start calling it a body transplant, not a head transplant. The living person got a new body, the dead person did not get a new head.
Pat
Sitting in front of an electrical box that sends out signals to billions of people everyday is also against the "laws of nature."
Please live up to your own lame excuse for why this shouldn't be and stop sitting in front of that box.
Actually, computers and the internet, etc. do follow the laws of nature, quite well. Technically speaking, everything we do follows the law of nature, otherwise it would be miraculous. That said, it still doesn't address the morality of the issue.
Morality is part of nature as well, otherwise it would be divine. What is the morality of putting a broken limb in a cast?
My last boss had his head transplanted up an anus.
if I add a second head as a new dependent?
offtopic: I do like the menu moving to the top of the page but think you still need to provide a little more border on the LHS.
Well, heck. Now that we've mastered that pesky matter of grafting severed spinal cords, surely the optic nerve and other lesser bundles should be a piece of cake. So why not just do a brain transplant?
Anubis? Is that you?
I hope someday some other scientist use these scientists for the same experiment. Sever their heads, reconnect them onto the others' body, and let them feel the extreme pain and suffering that they put animals through in their experimentations before they die because the experiment failed. Animal experimentation is disgustingly cruel and I go out of my way to buy products that specifically say they did no animal experimentation whenever possible.
Mary Shelley tried to warn us of this a long time ago.
No, she did not. Also, Nostradamus didn't predict Hitler or the September 11th attacks. As for the ethics of the issue, that's a tough one. I agree with you that there "may" be a black market for this, eventually. This isn't like getting a gunshot wound treated at a back-alley clinic. With proper regulations, it can be controlled in a safe, ethical manner.
Sounds like a pretty foolproof way of extending life. Many many people start degrading in their mind well before actually body failure, but there are 100 yos with decent faculties. And a better working body would help with many brain problems.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What I don't understand is why do people without legs and arms get leg/arm transplants (how about bone transplants)? It seems that we would need to master that before we start attaching heads.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I think you're being wrong-headed about this. Time for a transplant!
Why transplant a head when Robocops would be so much cooler and more likely to do within the next century. Two years to successfully transplant a head? That sounds absurd. Give the man his meds please.
To keep the limb stabilized until the bone grows back together, like nature intended. If you're going to call medicine immoral you should go after transplants.
NIXON'S BACK!
TLDR: Skip to the last paragraph for the best part. I didn't find it until I wrote all this up.
Since this is the 2nd Slashdot summary talking about this seemingly wacky procedure, I I decided to look into him a bit. Unfortunately the hard transplant stuff is 99.99% of what the search results return. He even gave a TED talk on the topic of human consciousness. It is possible this guy is just trolling to sell his recent philosophy book since he left his job as a neurosurgeon.
Dr Canavero believes that the brain does not generate consciousness, but only filters it. His goal is to open the filter and see what lies beyond.
Perhaps the fields of neurosurgery and chiropractic draw people who have a fascination with human consciousness, like how some chiropractors think that they can cure any disease by cracking your back?
He claims to be part of the "Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group" which is "a Think Tank for the advancement of neuromodulation." It looks like that group is just him, and perhaps one colleage named "Vincenzo Bonicalzi MD" who co-authored a book with him in 2007. Together they wrote "Central Pain Syndrome: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Management" But in 2014 Dr Canavero self published "Immortal: Why CONSCIOUSNESS is NOT in the BRAIN". If you read the summary, it looks like your metaphysical philosophy.
The best part: Doctor Canavero and his "group" believe that through a combination of electrical stimulation and head transplants that he can create a society of perfect immortal beings.
Like something with the body of a crab and the head of a Social Worker?
Sleeper
So... can I have your body if you're done with it?
If you think about it, if we can eventually place the brain in a container that can withstand the vacuum of space and harsh climates on other planets, we could solve some of the logistics of traveling to Mars and beyond.
So as crazy as this sounds, it could be a first step toward practical space travel.
Hey, this is great, for multiple reasons:
Trouble losing weight? Nooooo problem anymore!
Trying to sell black market organs? Forget all that nasty slicing and dicing; just grab the entire bag instead.
Lawsuit deniability: *I* didn't hold that gun on the bank teller. The hand in that body did. (probably only works for the first few lawsuits though.)
I guess they use Futurarama's Head-in-a-Jar while they're swapping heads?
Gives a whole new worry in the bar scene, though: "Hey girl, you've got a GREAT body." She frowns and squints back: "Why do you say that?"
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Well, I can't think of a better opportunity to revisit the classic roleplaying tale of The Head of Vecna.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Your comment is probably the most insightful here.
Even with extreme optimism about neurplasticity and nerve cells sliced in the middle (not separated at the synapses but chopped like a stalk of celery) deciding to attach to other sliced neurons, the idea of taking one spinal cord and gluing it to another spinal cord and having ANYTHING line up right seems absurd to me. Talk about a registration problem! I suspect the only way to do it would be to be to perform microscopic surgery where tiny machines connect neurons one-by-one. Of course, even if we had that technology, there's a whole other problem of knowing which ones to connect to which, which probably doesn't have a real solution as you pointed out.
Sometimes I wonder about the average slashdotter.
Put up a 3D printing story and the collective orgasm can be seen from another galaxy. It's a game changer, it's the future, we're all Luddites, it's like Star Trek.
Talk about Mars One and most of you are rolling up your Elon Musk posters and packing your suitcases.
Never mind the science, reality, or physical limits.
But put up any story about biology, or anything that could help sick people or *gasp* extend our lifespan, and you all turn into the most skeptical scientists ever. You know all the studies, all the papers, all the journals, you suddenly believe in all kinds of limits.
I wonder, if you had grown up watching sci-fi about long-lived humans instead of sci-fi about spaceships, would your opinions be different? Or are you really as rational as you think.
I know brain injuries for events like near downing occasional leave bodies that can recover to health but the brain so damaged they will never escape a vegetative state. Certainly other brain injuries due to head knocks etc can have similar results.
How many of these bodies are really available? Hollywood would have us believe quite a lot but I am not sure that is the case.
That said how many of these potential donators are really out there ethically speaking? The body deteriorates when we are talking about a persistent vegetative state requiring feeding tubes and ventilators and such. Can we, will we in the foreseeable future be able to better identify when the patients brain won't recover. Right now there is already a financial incentive to pull the plug. What will happen to these patients who can't speak for themselves when those making decisions for them are under pressure to give their body to someone else? Will these lead to prematurely giving up on some folks?
Seems like there should be some lower hanging fruit to go after in terms of modern medicine than head swaps. In fact just focusing reconnecting the sever spinal cord in the same monkey without adding the additional trauma and unknowns associated with the rest of the head swap would probably do more to help the disabled, which I am sure far out number the persistently comatose.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I think I've seen this movie before. It doesn't end well.
Best Slashdot Co
The first thing they need to do is start calling it a body transplant, not a head transplant. The living person got a new body, the dead person did not get a new head.
Pat
Reminds me of George Carlins' near miss routine.
Yes but I have to warn you, it seems resistant to sex.
Mostly random stuff.
You mean Jagger will "Move like Jagger" again?
(And, I'm having a Freejack flashback. Vacendak wants his new body too.)
*too busy going after abortions*
I think he just wants someone to allow him to swap heads around on Monkey's to see what happens, I hope nobody encourages him.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It goes against all the laws of nature
If you mean to say I personally don't like the idea then just come out and say it. Don't waste our time with the 'laws of nature' garbage.
Can I get a body with a big penis? Something like what this guy has would be great thanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_%28pornographic_actor%29
I could use a new head.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Dr. Frankenstein: For the experiment to be a success, all of the body parts must be enlarged.
Inga: His veins, his feet, his hands, his organs vould all have to be increased in size.
Dr. Frankenstein: Exactly.
Inga: He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker.
Dr. Frankenstein: That goes without saying.
Unfortunately it is not popular to read science fiction. If it was, people would have a way better understanding of what and who a person is.
If you take two bodies and swap the brains, who the person is is defined by the brain.
Likewise, if the brain is incompatible with the body (Like the case with transsexuals.) then it is the body that is wrong, not the brain.
"All you have is Emilio Estevez for a transplant? Well, OK. But please, god, let's put an end to his acting."
"Oh, it's over already? Good."
Steel the entire body. Instead of waking up in a bathtub full of ice with your kidney gone, wake up (or not) with you body gone! Maybe that is what ISIS is actually doing, hmmm...
Richard Nixon almost won an election with Bender's body.
I'd never leave the house!
Don't bother giving me toys for Christmas; I'd already have something to play with.
This transplant sounds like one of those old cartoons where someone got their head chopped off and they just glued both sides and slapped it back together. Yes it would be very intricate work reattaching all of the muscles and veins but in effect they're just mashing the spinal cord ends together and saturating them in compounds that might make them merge. Even if the spinal cord did merge the recovery would be a nightmare as the body would have to learn a completely new set of connections, a connection that might have once controlled a few muscles in their arm might now be connected some skin temperature/pressure senses. Trying to move ones toe would now result in a wholly uncoordinated set of actions spread throughout the body. Assuming that a person could even make the adjustment it would take years and even then they would never be back to 100%. I think the only effective way to do a head transplant would be with some form of nano robots that would determine what each nerve fiber did and then sever the connection and replace it with some kind of temporary coupling. After weeks or months eventually every nerve connection in the spinal cord would be mapped and replaced. A similar procedure would have to be done on the donor body. Before the transplant was done an adapter would have to be fashioned that would route the nerve impulses to the corresponding connection. Then the head could be removed from its original body, the spinal cord could be quickly attached to the donor body via the already installed adapter and then the procedure would progress much as it would here with muscle and blood vesicles being attached and a recovery period.
ARRRUUUUUU!
The Headless Body of Spiro Agnew likes this
Does this mean ISIS is doing science after all? Have we misjudged them? They can do half of this procedure, we just have to wait until they can do the other half.
no, I don't have a sig
Too many movie references pop into my head, from Young Frankenstein ("it's pronounced, "FRAW-ken-shteen") to Futurama. Do we really want ot give Richard Nixon's head a new body?
I see companies in the future that offer new bodies to old people. I would love to have a 20 year old body with my 60 year old head. I would dump my hubbie and find a younger one.
no, I don't have a sig
Can we even connect a limb in such a way that the person has full mobility and feeling in the limb? Pretty sure the answer is no. Probably should get that one down and working first.
Depends which way you look at it. :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
This article says it was tried in the 70's, let not forget the work a Russian did in the late 40's and 50's. If you can move the head, why can they fix spinal cord injuries?
'This "Journal" is one of aobut 1000 launched this year "internet only" Hardly the place top published much ground breaking work...
Surgical Neurology International® is an open access, Internet-only journal
There can be only one...
"and the patient would be induced into a coma for several weeks to keep them from moving around"
At first I was thinking it was a grammatical error to say "patient", and then "them" until I thought about it. It would be two people combined.
Now, how do you select the candidates and secure proper permission? For the donor head, it might not be too hard. For the body it might be more difficult. Will China be offering complete donor bodies from executions?
yea, great idea, it's not like they can run! bwahahaa..
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I recently read an article that was essentially "how could Steven Hawking have kids", and somebody with a similar condition basically stated that while you lose motor functions elsewhere, that particular part of the anatomy tends to work as it's part of the Parasympathetic nervous system
Because a little head never hurt anyone.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Skip the body transplant, just plant my head in a jar and stick me on a shelf, a few tubes and wires and voila!
for this day to happen.
Or, you know, you could be talking out of your ass.
The reason the parasympathetic system control of the heart and digestion continues to function in a case of a transected spinal cord is that CN X doesn't run in the spinal column. Instead, it comes out and runs down the neck roughly along the path of the jugular vein.
Far from being "local control", the root of CN X is in the medulla. The brainstem.
Here, educate yourself rather than spreading misinformation: Vagus Nerve.
Nobody tell Dick Cheney.
this is slashdot. Here is my suggestion for future scientists. Why not connect a multiplexer of sorts (computer controlled) in between the head and the new body and then remap the nerve signals as required.
isn't this more of a *human-body* transplant?
"A child could do it" -- Leonard McCoy
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
that the humans actively choose this, after having the potential risks and the likelihood of failure (and possible negative results of failure, though in some cases it might essentially be "you still can't move your legs, just like you couldn't before") thoroughly explained to them. I don't know any "medical ethicists" but in a more general context, some would even argue that is is more ethical to test on willing and fully-informed human subjects than to test on unwilling (and impossible to inform) animals. I wouldn't go quite that far; I think animal research (especially on higher mammals) shouldn't be taken lightly and should only be done sparingly, but I do think it's necessary and appropriate in many cases. At the same time I can see the potential for abuse if human subjects are ever used without proper vetting of treatments and potentially without adequate explanation (and comprehension) of the risks. Anyway, we already offer experimental drugs to terminally ill patients (and when companies try to withhold them due to concerns about safety and limited efficacy, people get all up in arms and throw a fit because you're "denying them potentially life-saving treatments"). Hearing about blind people with experimental brain implants and folks with seizure disorders also being used to test internal brain stimulation, etc, makes it sound like either you're totally wrong about "most medical ethicists" or plenty of doctors, researchers, and the subjects themselves don't give a damn what those ethicists say.
Cause if not, I can finally live my dream ..
...until the cranial screwtop is invented.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Can you swap a male head onto a female body?
The possibilities are endless...
Some things you don't want to be possible. I think by the time this is technically possible it will be possible to also repair whatever damage has been done to the original persons body and not do something as inhuman as this.
I'm not sure that a bodyless brain solves many problems that either long-term hibernation or virtual reality would solve better.
I value human space exploration for reasons orthagonal to the hard science, but I think advancements in virtual reality are going to make it an even harder sell. I know that communications lag is something of a stumbling block for serious interactivity.
But maybe with enough sensors and data streamed back some of the interactivity could be generated locally but with remotely gathered information. Maybe using some of this you could "act out' what you wanted the rover to do in VR with preliminary and interpolated data. The rover could then actually execute this autonomously and then if you went back and re-do what you acted out, enough specific data would have been generated that it would give you an extremely lifelike VR experience.
I think of it sort of like the way Google Street View works now. You can drive up and down the street looking at houses, and you can zoom in and out and turn your head but nothing else. What if you could walk up to an item of interest in a yard in VR. With just the street view data, it would look bad (warped perspective, excessive zoom, etc). But if the system knew exactly what you were interested in, sent in a camera setup after to mirror your examantion of the yard item but in complete detail you could go back to that same street view scene and actually walk up to the item.
Like many slash dotters, my body is tired and broken from to many years sitting in front of monitors. My brain is also old and tierd. So I'd like to transplant both please.
when disconnecting the head, remove the spinal column as well, Both intact... move to the other body.
Once they get this down, what will keep us from having a situation kind of like the movie Free Jack? The whole time travel issue aside. Right now China and ISIS are harvesting organs for sale on the open market. Now they can just harvest the whole carcase in one shot. I could go and purchase the body of an 18 year old and have another go at life as a young guy?
Paul E. Bahre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
"Scientific links" section contain a link to the film about similar experiments on the dogs in Soviet Union.
I've always wanted a new head.
It depends on which part makes the decisions. In my case that'd be the penis so it'd be a head transplant.
swap heads around on Monkey's
Monkey's ..what? Besides, what have you against the man? I've met Mr. Monkey before. I found him a thoroughly pleasant character.