
Doctor Ready to Perform First Human Head Transplant - tdurden
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/06/first-human-head-transplant-452240.html
======
zadig
I'm feeling incredibly bearish on this one.  The central nervous system is not
meant to be trifled with. 

There are way too many questions here.  What's the evidence for this?  Two
papers by two of his collaborators?  How are neurons that have already
degenerated in the brainstem due to the Werdnig-Hoffmann Disease going to be
rescued?  How is he going to reconnect different pathways between the brain and
spinal cord if they have a different spatial distribution?  So is the patient
going to have the immune system of the donor body - if so, what does that mean
for the head?  What evidence is there that the visceral organs are going to be
correctly modulated by the brain?  What's going to happen to his collaborator's
monkeys in a couple years? 

~~~
x5n1
I don't see how this is suppose to work when we can not fix quadriplegic
people.  At the end of the day the only problem that they have is that the
nerve connections are damaged.  So if we can't fix that how do we move on to
something so much more complex like this. 

edit: Answer is here under Gemini, which claims to use a unique procedure to
fuse the severed nerve bundle together, after doing a very clean cut. 

[http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/heaven-...](http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/heaven-
the-head-anastomosis-venture-project-outline-for-the-first-human-head-
transplantation-with-spinal-linkage-gemini/)

~~~
serf
> don't see how this is suppose to work when we can not fix quadriplegic
> people. 

folks with spinal cord injuries are often that way not due to injury caused by
trauma itself, but due to their bodies reaction after that trauma.  Swelling
and inflammation near the damage leads to contusion of nervous tissue and the
formation of scar-tissue like plaques that reduce the effectiveness of myelin
as an electrical material.  We can't repair that form of damage yet, only hope
to limit it through quick response after trauma. 

The HEAVEN paper goes through the steps they are going to take to make sure
that the body is not allowed to react in such a way.  A very sharp blade is
used and a chemical, PEG, is used to refuse the nervous tissue within a small
very small time-frame, along with chilling the patient and other protocols. 

tl;dr : a spinal cord injury is tricky because the overall amount of bandwidth
between the brain and the nervous system is reduced (so-far) irreversibly. 

This surgery is tricky (amongst a zillion other reasons) because rather than
dealing with a reduction in bandwidth, it's hoped that the brain is plastic
enough to be able to deal with the different spatial characteristics of the
patients nervous tissue and matching body. 

 _even shorter tl;dr_ : it's easier to manage an injury you made than one you
were handed. 

(p.s.  tetra/quad/para-plegia are symptoms, not diseases.  the causes are
numerous and plentiful.  i'm only using spinal cord injury as an example
because I am more familiar with it than other diseases that cause paralysis)

~~~
Camillo
In that case, could you make _two_ ultra-precise cuts above and below the
lesion, and connect the stumps with a piece of the spinal cord of a brain-dead
patient, similarly cut?  Would that not be worth trying first? 

------
nothis
The language he uses in the TEDx talk feels like he has delusions of grandeur
("welcome to heaven", "your lives will never be the same").  Makes me worried
there isn't as much substance behind this as he tries to make us believe. 

------
blake8086
Isn't this a body transplant? 

~~~
sshbio
Do we want to save the head or to save the body.  Maybe the former.  Maybe...

~~~
kamaal
The most dangerous part of the whole surgery is what happens if something goes
wrong midway after they've cut the heads out? 

Scenario 1: Irrecoverable scenario where they can't sew the head to the new
body.  Now what?  Will they sew it back to the original body?  Let the guy
die(What does this even mean at this stage)? 

Scenario 2: Head can be put on new body but they can't do it all properly,
when and how do they call it quits?  What will be the state of the guy?  Will
they just him? 

Other unknown unknowns. 

Apart from the fact that the patient has taken a leap of faith, to prefer
death over suffering a medical condition all his life.  You have to say the
doctors involved in this, and you need some really crazy amounts of courage to
even attempt something like this. 

~~~
sshbio
It definetly seems insane to me, we are not ready.  Will we ever be? 

I do not imagine any way to face these situations. 

------
Balgair
The ASTRONOMICALLY MASSIVE ethical issues aside, scientifically and medically
speaking, this is pure lunacy. 

"Organ" rejection is going to be a huge problem here, as you have the head's
immune response fighting with the body's and no previous research has been
shown that one will win over the other. 

The surgeon has done this on 2 monkey models and there is not yet a long term
history of the procedure.  There are no verification studies by other groups,
AFAIK, that prove his methods work.  There are no measures of the health of the
monkey in the long term.  I believe that the monkeys were all healthy and
diseased like the human cases. 

Where is the body donor coming from and in what state is that corpse relative
to surgery?  Was it in an automotive accident 2 hours ago?  Too many variables
here. 

Small monkeys are one thing to freeze down, but a human head is another.  Maybe
try this on pigs first and see, as their vascular system is comparable in size
to ours and they have will be a good extreme case for eating issues and
infections that the person will encounter. 

What in the everliving hell kind of surgery suite is this going to be?!  Holy
mother if it is not going to be the most expensive operation in history.  The
chaos in trying to get all those people in there and in the right places at
the right times itself will need to be practiced for months if not a year. 
Again, porcine models will help with that. 

Now, the science aside.  The ethical issues are astounding and not easily
dismissed.  The artificial heart changed our perception of ourselves as what it
meant to be human, and if this goes through, this will be just as challenging
to our ideas of a human as well.  That said, the surgeon sounds like a nut bag
that has been writing himself too many painkillers or something.  I'd never
want this guy to operate on me. 

------
readams
Has there ever been any sort of success at a spinal fusion anything remotely
like this?  In any vertebrate?  This is way past crazy. 

~~~
jasongill
According to the article, yes, repeatedly

~~~
readams
The key element of fusing the spinal cord together has never been done. 

~~~
jasongill
From the article: "Canavero’s collaborator, Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical
University in China, recently completed a monkey head transplant.  And
Canavero’s colleague, C-Yoon Kim of the Konkuk University School of Medicine
in South Korea published a study in the journal Spinal Cord showing how his
team re-established motor movements in mice whose neck spinal cords had been
severed and re-fused." 

------
pjlegato
When an article about software, encryption, the Internet, etc.  appears in
Newsweek, HN is eager to rip it apart and deconstruct the laughably naive way
the author presents these complex systems.  HN is quick to point out how the
author's numerous forms of severe technical ignorance preclude anything
resembling a correct description of the problem, obscure critical facts about
the situation, and prevent the reader from drawing any valid conclusions. 

When an article about neurosurgery appears in Newsweek, however, everyone has
a strong opinion on whether it's a good idea. 

------
x5n1
Here is the outline of what he's trying to do

[http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/heaven-...](http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint_articles/heaven-
the-head-anastomosis-venture-project-outline-for-the-first-human-head-
transplantation-with-spinal-linkage-gemini/)

------
bowmessage
"Next, Spiridonov’s head will be nearly frozen, ultimately reaching 12 to 15
degrees Celsius, which will make him temporarily brain-dead." 

What?!  Did I read this wrong? 

~~~
trhway
there were cases when people after a couple hours in the water under the ice
were brought back to live.  If i remember the record low body temperature was
~14C.

The 16C case of a toddler wandering outside into the winter that i was able to
find right now - [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/frozen-toddler-s-recovery-a-
mi...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/frozen-toddler-s-recovery-a-miracle-
doctors-1.287430)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's mammalian diving reflex, though.  This is a bit different...

~~~
duaneb
Mammalian diving reflex has nothing to do with the cooling of a body to slow
metabolic death. 

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It has a lot to do with people who spent a couple of hours in water under the
ice being revived, though - which was trhway's subject. 

------
egberts5
150?  That's a lot of doctor. _ snicker_

------
philprx
paywalled

------
PythonicAlpha
This article is behind a paywall! 

~~~
matejn
You can disable JavaScript and it won't show up. 

------
abhi3
I find this highly unethical and selfish that the doctor is using a disabled
and vulnerable human being as a guinea pig.  There is no way that this works. 
Such a procedure should have been attempted successfully on monkeys several
times before being allowed on a human.  I suggest everyone read this article in
full. 

~~~
jbob2000
Why do you find it unethical and selfish?  The patient is volunteering for the
procedure, are you ok with removing his autonomy by making this decision for
him?  Is it ok to let this patient essentially rot away in a wheel chair for
the rest of his life, knowing that there is a treatment that _might_ help him? 

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The knowledge gap between doctors and patients (or researchers and study
subjects) is so great that it is very easy for someone to sign up a desperate
patient by misleading them.  This is why we have such things as institutional
review boards to make sure that the risk vs benefit vs chance of success are
not too out of whack. 

~~~
pjlegato
There is nothing in that article that suggests institutional review boards are
not involved.