Doctor Ready to Perform First Human Head Transplant (newsweek.com)

Ross Kenneth Urken, reporting for Newsweek (edited and condensed): Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero had his Dr. Strange moment when he announced he'd be able to do a human head transplant in a two-part procedure he dubs HEAVEN (paywalled, this alternate link could help) (head anastomosis venture) and Gemini (the subsequent spinal cord fusion). [...] Canavero has a plan: It's a 36-hour, $20 million procedure involving at least 150 people, including doctors, nurses, technicians, psychologists and virtual reality engineers. In a specially equipped hospital suite, two surgical teams will work simultaneously -- one focused on Valery Spiridonov (patient) and the other on the donor's body, selected from a brain-dead patient and matched with the Spiridonov for height, build and immunotype. Both patients -- anesthetized and outfitted with breathing tubes -- will have their heads locked using metal pins and clamps, and electrodes will be attached to their bodies to monitor brain and heart activity. Next, Spiridonov's head will be nearly frozen, ultimately reaching 12 to 15 degrees Celsius, which will make him temporarily brain-dead.Shouldn't it be called a body transplant? Since a person is often defined by the brain. You can read the complete procedure here.

Comments

Yep, it's a body transplant

[BarbaraHudson]

But at $20 million dollars, it's definitely something you don't want to lose your head over. Too damn expensive!

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[jellomizer]

I am more curious on the long term effects vs. the procedure.

Our health and state of being is beyond just our brain. How we feel and experience the world is based on what our body translates as well. If you are feeling nervous stomach medicine can help that. Because when we feel nervous we send signals to our body and the sensation feedbacks to itself.

So getting a new body how much would that change the man?

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[courteaudotbiz]

I would say, before asking this question, let them fail a couple times... The first mechanical hearts had the patients survive only for a few hours. And the heart's connections are "pretty simple", compared to the head connections. We cannot even have patients recover from spinal cord injuries right now gawddammit! Let alone a head transplant, with the spinal cord "fusion" they're talking about, with all the vascular system, the respiratory / digestive parts, musculo-skeletal links...

I'll believe when I see the meatbag alive. And with a complete video of the procedure, to make sure it's not a conspiracy or something.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[Joe_Dragon]

20M us price. Real price 200K

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[macs4all]

But at $20 million dollars, it's definitely something you don't want to lose your head over. Too damn expensive!

Ba-dum-BUMP!

However, since the brain is off-limits to the immune system (which would REALLY love to attack and kill brain cells!), wouldn't it be better to do a BRAIN transplant, rather than messing with all the fleshy/muscle-y parts that are NOT off-limits to "rejection"?

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[BarbaraHudson]

They've been able to sever and reconnect spinal cords for a while now. The reason it's not all that easy with accident victims is the damage caused by the initial trauma. Look at that guy with the penis transplant - worked just fine, bhis girlfriend is pregnant

And then we have stupidity like this bogus story

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[BarbaraHudson]

Yeah. "you" are the head. It makes zero sense to talk about transplanting a head.

Unless you're talking about a penis transplant (an addadicktomy), in which case it makes perfect sense :-)

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[Applehu Akbar]

"And then we have stupidity like this bogus story [now8news.com]"

I hope that when this guy starts dating agin, he understands that neigh means neigh.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[Mr D from 63]

If you upgrade the CPU is it still the same computer?

Not according to Microsoft.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[OakDragon]

They were going to do a body transplant, but turned out the head is easier to pick up and move around.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[marciot]

It costs an arm and a leg to get a head in this world.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[Qzukk]

if you had a way to support the brain and eyes, you could separate the skull from the spine, then lift the skull off from the front, swap them, and then reattach the skull to the spine (and the throat and the arteries and so on). You'd have to split open the back of the skull and neck (and remove the back of the eye sockets) so it just slips off/on over the brain and brainstem and spinal column.

Re:Yep, it's a body transplant

[Altrag]

Its not quite the same question though. Transforming your "sense of self" is a purely psychological effect.

The head (/body?) transplant on the other hand is actually replacing the entire signalling mechanism and there's huge open questions about whether two different people process signals from their nerves in exactly the same way and things like that. Same with differing body chemistries and so on.

It could work out fine (well "fine".. I suspect the patient won't live more than a few hours at best given how new/experimental the procedure is) or it could work out like sticking an AMD chip on an Intel motherboard -- less than ideal.

They've of course done everything in their power to match the donor body to the patient body as best they possibly can in order to minimize the chance of weirdnesses but at the end of the day, nobody really knows for sure how the patient's brain will interpret a different body's signalling and chemistry beyond the very basics like matching blood types, assuming the he survives the operation at all.

Even something as simple as a scar.. suddenly you wake up and a small area of skin no longer moves the way you expect. How long will it take you to adjust to that? Ever got strong glue stuck to your skin? Remember how annoying it is and how much relief you feel when you finally peel it off? Now what if you can't, ever?

I mean that's a super super minor example (and he'd probably get used to it in a few days to be sure) but its suggestive of the kind of issues this guy will potentially be facing. You can take it to the next level with things like recognizing when you need to take a dump -- he could be anywhere from totally constipated to completely incontinent if his new body doesn't send the "my bowels are full better find some porcelain soon" signal the same way his old body did. And take it to another level again when you start considering things like immune response signalling that are life-threatening rather than just annoying or embarrassing.

If nothing else, I'm sure it will provide a fairly significant number of papers on the operation and (hopefully) post-operative psychology. The patient is definitely leaving an amazing scientific legacy for the rest of us, no matter what ends up happening to him personally.

Paywall

[bruce_the_loon]

Please stop posting paywalled articles.

Re:Paywall

[msmash]

Thanks for pointing that out. It's a feature article, so you wouldn't find this news elsewhere. I have updated the story to add a Google cache link of the story, check if that helps.

FINALLY

[argStyopa]

...I'll be able to use the Head of Vecna!
It has been a long, oft-tragic story.

http://www.blindpanic.com/humo...

Dammit Jim, it's a body transplant

[OzPeter]

Yep body transplant.

But can someone point to where he has done successful animal trials? Or even sliced and diced the same animal in order to reattach the spinal cord? Or Froze and un-froze an animal head?

Until the parts are tested, colour me skeptical

Re:Dammit Jim, it's a body transplant

[gurps_npc]

There are several examples that resulted in living animals that were paralyzed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Re:Dammit Jim, it's a body transplant

[SB5407]

AND, it said right there in the Newsweek article that Dr. Robert J. White did the first (mostly?) successful head transplant on a monkey in 1970. Lots of precedent for this, surprisingly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Dammit Jim, it's a body transplant

[glwtta]

The monkey was paralyzed, and died 9 days later - that is a pretty low bar for "successful".

Re:Dammit Jim, it's a body transplant

[rahvin112]

It was 1970, he's lucky the damn thing didn't explode on the table during surgery.

Re:Body Transplant!

[sinij]

Nobody wants a head transplant.

What a brain-dead idea to agree to a head transplant.

Exactly

[goombah99]

How do you spend 20 million on this? I'm skeptical. For 20 million I'd expect to get a head upgrade to go with the body upgrade.

Re:Exactly

[MobyDisk]

The article says it requires 150 people for 36-hours. Suppose these highly-paid medical professionals cost $100/hr. So $100/hr x 150 people x 36 hours = $540,000 just in labor. Add the machinery, the cost of the hospital rooms, the months to years of recovery, the training, medications - $20M seems like a bargain.

Also: From the standpoint of the body, it is a head upgrade! :-)

Month granuarity is the problem

[tepples]

Say Newsweek and nine other sites all noticed a sharp drop in advertisement revenue due to tracking blockers and responded by putting up a paywall. How many visitors would actually be willing to buy a whole month's subscription to all these sites for $40* just to read one article on each site? Or if you operated such a site, which micropayment method would you use instead to sell access to individual articles?

* Assuming each site offers the same price as WIRED ($4/mo)

Re:Month granuarity is the problem

[shaitand]

The analogy has a very large flaw in that loss prevention sensors and personnel exist to prevent theft and there is no theft involved in what we are discussing.

That said, I think it would be fair to characterize some loss prevention efforts as anti-consumer and effectively going to war with customers. The reality of these efforts shows, as brick and mortar retailers introduce more and more of these things which interfere with the experience of legitimate consumers they become less and less convenient relative to online retailers at a time when they need to emphasize how much more convenient they are.

It isn't just sensors, which have largely been proven to be useless. You can simply ignore the alarms being tripped and walk out of the store anyway. They can't even detain you. It's also the new return policies at many retailers especially with regard to electronics and media. This is especially silly with media which the retailer can simply report as unsold and destroyed when returned.

Nothing I said is contrary to content producers making a living. It is simply a longer term investment. Look at the comic industry. They've encouraged people to clone their work, they've encouraged copying, etc and continued to make their products available at low cost for decades. That loyal fanbase that they've nurtured and grown over time has proven more than willing to pay for premium content and it now paying off in billions at the box office.

Early Google was not merely a better search engine, it actually wasn't all that much better in the beginning in terms of results. Google built it's base on being less intrusive with it's advertising than competitors. The much cleaner page and simplicity when combined with ever improving search results is what drew people. Even when the results weren't dramatically better you could find information more quickly with google because you didn't have to wade through the crap and people liked a company that was pro-user. Odd that users would like a site that seemed pro-user.

People no longer believe in these content sources and in response they are throwing up a paywall and making it more difficult to get at them. You don't grow a reputation by having an ever shrinking base, if you have a massive following you have massive potential to make revenue.

Re: Month granuarity is the problem

[Aighearach]

Lie to yourself all you want, but if you read this comment and didn't send me $20, you stole from me. Because anybody can use any word at any time, even if it makes no sense. When you're 3 you'll understand.

Why not go dual core?

[goombah99]

It seems like a better idea, that would have to work if the current plan will work, would be to graft the head onto a healthy fully functional human. That is you get a human with two heads. One head is already fully integrated to the body. That's important because your body depends on an autonomic nervous system to regulate it. Even if it is true that the new head could learn to control the body's mucles-- eventually-- its not going to work out of the gate. SO the body is going to die or be on life support while things rewire. And I would wonder how a body on life support even gets the feedback it needs to engage in some neural plasticity.

On the other hand if you just graft the head and don't bother with the whole spinal cord thing then you have a lot more possibilities. The new head gets fed by a healthy working body. You might need to step up glucose production to handle two heads but I think that's within our current dynamic range.

Thus you could carry your mom or dad's head around on your shoulder.

You could then try to connect their spine to some other neural interface, either indirectly through say some strips of chest muscle that then control some electrical interface or directly to an electrical interface. Either way, you have the means to control some mechanical arms so the head at least has something it can do besides go for a ride.

Things like speech might be a problem till you figure out how to get an airway, throat, and the anchor points for jaw and tongue working right, but in the mean time you could steven hawking it with some eyebrow muscles or eye twitches.

Sees a lot more plausible and they already have done this with dogs.

Re:Why not go dual core?

[kimvette]

Zaphod Beeblebrox, is that you?

what? no Futurama Jokes yet?

[FudRucker]

i am ashamed of you slashdotters for not taking advantage of the Head in a Jar thing on Futurama, to make wisecracks about the worlds first head transplant, i wonder who the lucky head is? and the unfortunate head is?

Re:Immortal at last

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this body transplant surgery works perfectly, you are not immune from disease like Alzheimers and Parkinsons.

Oh really?

Re:never

[Locke2005]

Doesn't have to; she knows where all the bodies are buried!

Re:That's a subjective statement,

[wkwilley2]

This sounds like the beginning of the next Saw movie.

Re:Man's Head, Woman's Body

[cellocgw]

That would've made the story far more interesting, if a guy's head was attached to a woman's body.

It's been done. Heinlein "I will fear no evil" .

Re:Creeeeeeepy

[Nidi62]

So many things could go wrong. The spinal cord is the most complex bus in the body. Connecting the correct nerve on both ends seems almost impossible. Will his brain adapt to any incorrectly placed nerves?

Supposedly they actually tried this surgery a few years ago but screwed up the nerve connections so that whenever the patient tried to have a bowel movement his mouth would open. Fortunately last I heard he went on to have a very successful career as a politician.

Identity and law

[Dareth]

On the off chance this actually works, he will have the fingerprints and DNA of the donor. Will he be responsible for children fathered by the body donor prior to the surgery? What about afterwards? Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. But it would be interesting to see how it would play out.

Aging on a younger body

[nanospook]

So if you are 70 and get grafted to the body of an 18 year old.. Assuming all goes well, what will happen? Will your head still die on schedule? Or does the younger body result in a rejuvenation of the head and brain?