First Human Head Transplant will still happen soon based upon millions in sunk costs

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Italian doctor Sergio Canavero, Chinese doctor Ren Xiaoping and the Chinese government are still saying the first human head transplant will happen soon.

They were talking about a fall 2017 transplant but that did not happen. They are still saying it is imminent.

They have been worked on experiments with mice, dogs, and monkeys.

In November 2017, they transplanted a human head between two human cadavers.

There have been delays of months and years but they have funded surgical teams and have dedicated many years making progress to this goal. It seems clear that they believe that they can make this procedure successful, where the patient would survive for many months and possibly years and that the patient would be able to regain useful functions.

The procedure will likely cost in the range of $10-20 million and needs a medical team of about 80 surgeons and support staff.

The human cadaver trial must have cost several million dollars. The animal trials would also not have been cheap. The years of working toward this particular goal had a lot of opportunity cost for competent neurosurgeons.

As an observer of this, it is clear that Canavero is a true believer that this will be good and will benefit patients and humanity. It is clear that they have significant financial support. It is clear that there are people who would be willing to attempt the procedure. Therefore, it is a matter of time before it is attempted.

Ethicists and other doctors have been worried about the likely suffering and insanity of the patient. They worry that the person would only survive a few days in madness and agony.

In 2013, Canavero published

117 thoughts on “First Human Head Transplant will still happen soon based upon millions in sunk costs”

  6. I wonder if it would be beneficial to introduce gut microbes into each recipient awhile before the exchange. There is so many interesting outcomes that might be found if this succeeds.

  8. I wonder if it would be beneficial to introduce gut microbes into each recipient awhile before the exchange. There is so many interesting outcomes that might be found if this succeeds.

  9. So what is the basis for thinking that a body transplant would drive someone mad? Is it based on multiple viewings of Robocop, or is there something more behind it?

  10. How do you know the soul, whatever that is, does not stay with the brain? The brain must be consdidered the seat of consciousness. Seems like the most likely place for that soul thing to hang out. Where else would it reside, the butt?

  11. You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that …” When surgeons connect donor limbs or organs, do you assert that the donor’s ‘soul’ is still linked to the body part? Now I really can’t say if a soul exists or not, but to my mind, if it did … a persons ‘soul’ would center or reside in the brain. I think it safe to say that the human mind/brain is the primary seat of conscious thought and general cognition. So when you say, we can’t transplant the soul … it may be as you say, whereas, we may be able to transplant a body that has no living container (the brain). Now it may also be possible that we don’t have this ‘soul’ that you speak of … I won’t comment further on this, for the fact … that I don’t have definitive knowledge for or against this assertion (which may be moot anyway given my contextual construct).

  12. God doesn’t exist you idiot. Its a fantasy story made up by humans. Same goes for money. When a lot of people start believing in it, it tend to become a ”reality”. millions of MRI scans of the brain further, and we never identified a soul. Even if the soul would exist (which it 100% don’t), it would be immaterial (otherwise the mri would have shown it) and immaterial things can’t hold energy, meaning that we can’t survive after death, because energy is what we are.

  13. It contravenes the laws of God.” Um, which god, and written where? “You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul.” I tend to go with something Charles Platt once said along these lines, with respect to cryonics; “If souls exist, we don’t know the rules by which they operate.” “However, they will create one hell of a horror show, and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.” Wow. Do you have this same concern for those who, say, commit outright acts of genocide…?

  14. Well, it looks like we will find out first hand, what the implications are … which may in turn shed light on how accurate your religious convictions turn out to be.

  15. I would guess that the transplantee would be the ‘adoptive’ parent in the genetic sense … but in all else, the actualized parent contributor involved in the child’s conception. An even equally odd question would be, what would happen if the transplantee were to conceive with the reproductive partner of the donor’s body? … would the child be the stepson, or son? … actualized son by surgical proxy?

  16. I promise you this will never be successful. It contravenes the laws of God. You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that. However, they will create one hell of a horror show, and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.

  17. So what is the basis for thinking that a body transplant would drive someone mad? Is it based on multiple viewings of Robocop or is there something more behind it?

  18. How do you know the soul whatever that is does not stay with the brain? The brain must be consdidered the seat of consciousness. Seems like the most likely place for that soul thing to hang out. Where else would it reside the butt?

  19. You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that …””When surgeons connect donor limbs or organs”” do you assert that the donor’s ‘soul’ is still linked to the body part? Now I really can’t say if a soul exists or not but to my mind if it did … a persons ‘soul’ would center or reside in the brain. I think it safe to say that the human mind/brain is the primary seat of conscious thought and general cognition. So when you say we can’t transplant the soul … it may be as you say whereas we may be able to transplant a body that has no living container (the brain). Now it may also be possible that we don’t have this ‘soul’ that you speak of … I won’t comment further on this”” for the fact … that I don’t have definitive knowledge for or against this assertion (which may be moot anyway given my contextual construct).”””

  20. God doesn’t exist you idiot. Its a fantasy story made up by humans. Same goes for money. When a lot of people start believing in it it tend to become a ”reality”. millions of MRI scans of the brain further and we never identified a soul. Even if the soul would exist (which it 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} don’t) it would be immaterial (otherwise the mri would have shown it) and immaterial things can’t hold energy meaning that we can’t survive after death because energy is what we are.

  21. It contravenes the laws of God.””Um”” which god”” and written where?””””You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul.””””I tend to go with something Charles Platt once said along these lines”””” with respect to cryonics;””””If souls exist”””” we don’t know the rules by which they operate.””””””””However”” they will create one hell of a horror show”” and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.””””Wow. Do you have this same concern for those who”” say”” commit outright acts of genocide…?”””

  22. Well it looks like we will find out first hand what the implications are … which may in turn shed light on how accurate your religious convictions turn out to be.

  23. I would guess that the transplantee would be the ‘adoptive’ parent in the genetic sense … but in all else the actualized parent contributor involved in the child’s conception. An even equally odd question would be what would happen if the transplantee were to conceive with the reproductive partner of the donor’s body? … would the child be the stepson or son? … actualized son by surgical proxy?

  24. I promise you this will never be successful. It contravenes the laws of God. You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that. However they will create one hell of a horror show and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.

  25. Brian, head transplants are fake news, this isn’t science. It’s fiction. Canavero is a quack and dangerous. He also suffers from several psychological disorders which he admits to. One of them is narcissism, Most of all, articles like this does a huge disservice to anyone suffering from degenerative neuro-disease or paralysis (e.g., from accidents) etc. For this type of transplant to be successful you need (apart from the hundreds of other things that need to work) to be able to graft and “fix” nerves, millions of them. If this “doctor” actually had a method for accomplishing this it could benefit millions of people without having to replace their heads. He has no medical ethics. This is like posting an article about Dr. Mengele. Seriously dude.

  28. I don’t see how this can possibly work. Sure, with enough precision, you could disconnect and reconnect the same head on the same body, but a head on different body?? Everyone’s neck is different, and why should the nerves line up inside of it? The blood vessels might be close enough to get by, though even that, and the muscles around them, would be tough to match, even in apx. same-sized necks, but the nerves? That has to be different for everyone, and especially so if the patient has whole body paralysis or some other drastic debilitating condition, which would be the only reason to entertain such a radical procedure in the first place.

  29. This is a science / futurist site. People should keep their politics to themselves because it’s obviously going to be very divisive and add nothing to our purpose for being here. Calling him out is not worse. They should be called out.

  30. Note, I suspect the brain is up to the task of figuring out the new neural connections. After all, people people figure out how to do lots of things again, with therapy, after a debilitating stoke destroys parts of their brains.

  32. i guess no one really knows how much of our person and thoughts are based on the body we are born with.. learning a new body must mean something… its such a bizarre concept but im curious in a trainwreck sort of way

  36. Brian head transplants are fake news this isn’t science. It’s fiction. Canavero is a quack and dangerous. He also suffers from several psychological disorders which he admits to. One of them is narcissism Most of all articles like this does a huge disservice to anyone suffering from degenerative neuro-disease or paralysis (e.g. from accidents) etc. For this type of transplant to be successful you need (apart from the hundreds of other things that need to work) to be able to graft and fix”” nerves”””” millions of them. If this “”””doctor”””” actually had a method for accomplishing this it could benefit millions of people without having to replace their heads. He has no medical ethics. This is like posting an article about Dr. Mengele. Seriously dude.”””

  39. I don’t see how this can possibly work. Sure with enough precision you could disconnect and reconnect the same head on the same body but a head on different body?? Everyone’s neck is different and why should the nerves line up inside of it? The blood vessels might be close enough to get by though even that and the muscles around them would be tough to match even in apx. same-sized necks but the nerves? That has to be different for everyone and especially so if the patient has whole body paralysis or some other drastic debilitating condition which would be the only reason to entertain such a radical procedure in the first place.

  40. This is a science / futurist site. People should keep their politics to themselves because it’s obviously going to be very divisive and add nothing to our purpose for being here. Calling him out is not worse. They should be called out.

  41. Note I suspect the brain is up to the task of figuring out the new neural connections. After all people people figure out how to do lots of things again with therapy after a debilitating stoke destroys parts of their brains.

  43. i guess no one really knows how much of our person and thoughts are based on the body we are born with.. learning a new body must mean something… its such a bizarre concept but im curious in a trainwreck sort of way

  46. Actually, I have been. There is a huge difference from NPC type solutions and cutting off a head. The real question is why replace the entire head in the first place? There is no medical justification for that. At all. You can repair head and neck nerves (to some extent), replace the esophagus, graft arteries and other vessels, remove and treat cancers etc. The human body isn’t “modular”, especially when it comes to the function and interdependency the head has with the rest of the body. And, if therapies like NPC, stem cells etc are showing promise, why then replace the entire head? No need. This is a procedure concocted by a madman looking for a problem to solve. btw, here is a good article https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-018-0054-9

  47. It isn’t that bad, as the arrangement of the spinal cord nerves is somewhat fixed. Yeah, you’d have a good deal of mismatch, you’d have odd things going on like being confused about which finger somebody was touching. But it would be an improvement over total paralysis. That’s the key: At the present state of the art, even if it was successful, you’d have to be in pretty bad conditions for it to be an improvement.

  48. I think it’s possible you haven’t been following the progress in spinal cord repair. You actually can pull it off *under laboratory conditions*. The problem is that very few people accidentally suffer clean spinal cord severing while already in an operating room. The cut has to be clean and new on both ends for it to work. Then you butt the two ends up against each other with treatments that cause the cut ends of the axons to fuse. The result is not 100%, not remotely, but is probably good enough that somebody who was dying or otherwise paralyzed would find it acceptable.

  49. Actually I have been. There is a huge difference from NPC type solutions and cutting off a head. The real question is why replace the entire head in the first place? There is no medical justification for that. At all. You can repair head and neck nerves (to some extent) replace the esophagus graft arteries and other vessels remove and treat cancers etc. The human body isn’t modular””” especially when it comes to the function and interdependency the head has with the rest of the body. And if therapies like NPC stem cells etc are showing promise why then replace the entire head? No need. This is a procedure concocted by a madman looking for a problem to solve. btw”” here is a good article https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-018-0054-9“””

  50. It isn’t that bad as the arrangement of the spinal cord nerves is somewhat fixed. Yeah you’d have a good deal of mismatch you’d have odd things going on like being confused about which finger somebody was touching.But it would be an improvement over total paralysis. That’s the key: At the present state of the art even if it was successful you’d have to be in pretty bad conditions for it to be an improvement.

  51. I think it’s possible you haven’t been following the progress in spinal cord repair. You actually can pull it off *under laboratory conditions*. The problem is that very few people accidentally suffer clean spinal cord severing while already in an operating room. The cut has to be clean and new on both ends for it to work. Then you butt the two ends up against each other with treatments that cause the cut ends of the axons to fuse.The result is not 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} not remotely but is probably good enough that somebody who was dying or otherwise paralyzed would find it acceptable.

  52. Well it’s one thing on politicized issues like climate change but otherwise they should be called out for the dolts that they are.

  53. Constantly getting inputs that don’t match your expectations based on what you see could be very disorienting. It’s one thing if it’s a finger sensory nerve wired up to the wrong place, but what if nerves controlling say the diaphragm or heartbeat, etc. that are normally just background senses are now constantly grabbing your attention? Will the brain eventually re-assign these new sensory inputs? We just don’t know, it’s a big unknown.

  55. You can’t fix all cancers. Of course, with stage 4 cancer, you have to make sure there are no cancer cells floating around in the head, or it will just get carried into the new body and potentially start all over again. Even so, that would likely buy you several months or a year (of whatever quality of life, but quality of life always takes a back seat to length of life in treating advanced cancers). Regarding spinal cord injury, you find a good (and fresh) cadaver, cut the nerve cells above the break in the paralyzed person, cut the nerves cleanly in the paralyzed person to match, put them together with the special sauce and the previously paralyzed person might regain some mobility. I’m sure Christopher Reeves would be interested in this technology. It’s a little creepy, sure, but I bet the same things were said for the first person to get a pig’s heart valves implanted. Now it’s common.

  56. It’s not really a head transplant, the head stays the same. It’s a body transplant. Money invested is not an accurate predictor of success – in that case we’d have nuclear fusion reactors, and personal fuel-cell vehicles (GM reportedly spent $1 billion on that, before they went bankrupt in 2008).

  58. Well it’s one thing on politicized issues like climate change but otherwise they should be called out for the dolts that they are.

  59. Constantly getting inputs that don’t match your expectations based on what you see could be very disorienting. It’s one thing if it’s a finger sensory nerve wired up to the wrong place but what if nerves controlling say the diaphragm or heartbeat etc. that are normally just background senses are now constantly grabbing your attention? Will the brain eventually re-assign these new sensory inputs? We just don’t know it’s a big unknown.

  60. You apparently haven’t been reading NBF for very long. People show their political side all the time.

  61. You can’t fix all cancers. Of course with stage 4 cancer you have to make sure there are no cancer cells floating around in the head or it will just get carried into the new body and potentially start all over again. Even so that would likely buy you several months or a year (of whatever quality of life but quality of life always takes a back seat to length of life in treating advanced cancers).Regarding spinal cord injury you find a good (and fresh) cadaver cut the nerve cells above the break in the paralyzed person cut the nerves cleanly in the paralyzed person to match put them together with the special sauce and the previously paralyzed person might regain some mobility. I’m sure Christopher Reeves would be interested in this technology.It’s a little creepy sure but I bet the same things were said for the first person to get a pig’s heart valves implanted. Now it’s common.

  62. It’s not really a head transplant the head stays the same. It’s a body transplant.Money invested is not an accurate predictor of success – in that case we’d have nuclear fusion reactors and personal fuel-cell vehicles (GM reportedly spent $1 billion on that before they went bankrupt in 2008).

  66. The reason for replacing the whole body below the head, is that you eliminate a whole body’s worth of problems in one go. Look, you can start with a single organ transplant. Relatively straightforward. Multi organ transplants get more complicated, the “border” you have to deal with expands. But like fencing in an area on a globe, eventually you reach a maximum border, and after that increasing the amount of the body replaced simplifies things, reduces the border again. You’ve got a guy whose whole body except his head is a mess, it would be more simple to swap everything in one go, than to replace one organ after another after another. Take my neighbor across the street. MS, a disease that destroys the ability of nerves to drive muscles. She’s wasting away, when we first met her she could walk with a walker, now she’s bed bound, soon she’ll not be able to command her diaphragm, and will stop breathing without aid. A head transplant would fix almost all of that in one operation.

  67. The reason for replacing the whole body below the head is that you eliminate a whole body’s worth of problems in one go. Look you can start with a single organ transplant. Relatively straightforward. Multi organ transplants get more complicated the border”” you have to deal with expands. But like fencing in an area on a globe”” eventually you reach a maximum border and after that increasing the amount of the body replaced simplifies things reduces the border again.You’ve got a guy whose whole body except his head is a mess it would be more simple to swap everything in one go than to replace one organ after another after another.Take my neighbor across the street. MS a disease that destroys the ability of nerves to drive muscles. She’s wasting away when we first met her she could walk with a walker now she’s bed bound soon she’ll not be able to command her diaphragm”” and will stop breathing without aid.A head transplant would fix almost all of that in one operation.”””

  70. Things only become practical if you start trying them when they’re impractical. Medical procedurese don’t spring forth fully formed. As long as he’s getting informed consent, I don’t care if his agreement with the patient involves the head being put on backwards.

  71. No. Current PNA-repair technology is limited to individual nerves and, unfortunately, doesn’t limit cell death or Wallerian degeneration. And recovery after severing STA is extremely poor because STA’s don’t regenerate. Now try this with millions of nerves. This is “probably” not “good enough”. You can do a LOT with existing nerve structures, stem cells, PEG fusion, antioxidants, micro-sutures etc to vastly improve the quality of life for a patient with nerve damage. Replacing their body? Why – there is no ethical reason.

  72. heart surgery is plumbing. Connecting millions of nerves while also ensuring nothing has passed the blood-brain barrier or would (your “good” cadaver) or has genetic implications? Not so easy (or needed). There is no “special sauce”. I think you are simplifying an extremely complicated, and dangerous, surgical procedure. Explain it to me, I have a degree in neurobiology. What is this “sauce” you mention? It’s better to focus on real science like stem cell therapies.

  73. The “border” analogy makes sense, but unfortunately not in the medical sense. A patient might need a heart-lung transplant, for instance as a result of late-stage heart disease, or a kidney transplant due to diabetes, or a liver transplant due to hepatitis. I.e RARELY if ever is a patient faced with “multi-organ” transplant needs. But let’s say there is. Someone is very old and organs are failing one after another. Years of smoking, drinking, stress, genetics etc add up. Will a new body help? In theory, yes of course. That is where this method isn’t even science fiction, it’s just bad science. There is no proof, method, or technique explained “in science” how this possibly could work. In theory, you could load up the brain into a virtual machine and live your life out in bliss, too. But fiction doesn’t mean it will work. It might, one day, somehow, but not where this is going. In a Star Trek future? maybe. If Canavero was a real doctor and ethical, he would be sharing his discoveries and techniques. He doesn’t. It isn’t like inventing a new type of internet search algorithm and keeping it secret. Advancing medical techniques and therapies is a public affair, for good reason, not just ethically. It is unheard of that someone calling themselves a doctor keeps a lid on the science. Just not done, except for quacks. Your point of both MS and Werdnig-Hoffman (which is what Canavero’s “star” patient suffers from) makes no sense from a medical point of view. Obviously the details of both patients aren’t known, but if someone has MS, their brain has lesions. A new body won’t help. A clear MRI pre-MS diagnosis could mean many different things, so why go through with a head transplant? With W-H, you get cell death (apoptotic) in the brain – thalamus and cerebral cortex. The survival rate for WH is only a few years. That Canavero chose to highlight this type of diseased patient as an example of someone who could benefit from a head transplant goes to show the guy isn’t

  74. Things only become practical if you start trying them when they’re impractical. Medical procedurese don’t spring forth fully formed.As long as he’s getting informed consent I don’t care if his agreement with the patient involves the head being put on backwards.

  75. No. Current PNA-repair technology is limited to individual nerves and unfortunately doesn’t limit cell death or Wallerian degeneration. And recovery after severing STA is extremely poor because STA’s don’t regenerate. Now try this with millions of nerves. This is probably”” not “”””good enough””””. You can do a LOT with existing nerve structures”” stem cells PEG fusion antioxidants”” micro-sutures etc to vastly improve the quality of life for a patient with nerve damage. Replacing their body? Why – there is no ethical reason.”””

  76. heart surgery is plumbing. Connecting millions of nerves while also ensuring nothing has passed the blood-brain barrier or would (your good”” cadaver) or has genetic implications? Not so easy (or needed). There is no “”””special sauce””””. I think you are simplifying an extremely complicated”” and dangerous surgical procedure. Explain it to me”” I have a degree in neurobiology. What is this “”””sauce”””” you mention? It’s better to focus on real science like stem cell therapies.”””

  77. The border”” analogy makes sense”” but unfortunately not in the medical sense. A patient might need a heart-lung transplant for instance as a result of late-stage heart disease or a kidney transplant due to diabetes”” or a liver transplant due to hepatitis. I.e RARELY if ever is a patient faced with “”””multi-organ”””” transplant needs. But let’s say there is. Someone is very old and organs are failing one after another. Years of smoking”” drinking stress genetics etc add up. Will a new body help? In theory yes of course. That is where this method isn’t even science fiction it’s just bad science. There is no proof method”” or technique explained “”””in science”””” how this possibly could work. In theory”” you could load up the brain into a virtual machine and live your life out in bliss too. But fiction doesn’t mean it will work. It might one day somehow but not where this is going. In a Star Trek future? maybe. If Canavero was a real doctor and ethical he would be sharing his discoveries and techniques. He doesn’t. It isn’t like inventing a new type of internet search algorithm and keeping it secret. Advancing medical techniques and therapies is a public affair for good reason not just ethically. It is unheard of that someone calling themselves a doctor keeps a lid on the science. Just not done”” except for quacks. Your point of both MS and Werdnig-Hoffman (which is what Canavero’s “”””star”””” patient suffers from) makes no sense from a medical point of view. Obviously the details of both patients aren’t known”” but if someone has MS their brain has lesions. A new body won’t help. A clear MRI pre-MS diagnosis could mean many different things so why go through with a head transplant? With W-H”” you get cell death (apoptotic) in the brain – thalamus and cerebral cortex. The survival rate for WH is only a few years. That Canavero chose to highlight this type of diseased patient as an example of someone who could benefit from a head transplant goes to show th”

  78. I agree! It would definitely be a breakthrough and pave way for new discoveries whether it is successful or a failure. With consent from the patient this isn’t much of an ethical issue anymore.

  79. I agree! It would definitely be a breakthrough and pave way for new discoveries whether it is successful or a failure. With consent from the patient this isn’t much of an ethical issue anymore.

  80. Call me what you will, but i don’t care too terribly for talks of ethics or this or that. People get too stuck up in their own ideas of what is right or wrong. The guy having it done chose this and offered himself up for the long shot of a better life. Regardless of what happens, I’m excited to see the results. They called the first organ transplants ridiculous and butchery. Hell, the first steps to learning about blood disorders were to slap leeches on a wound. Both parties are willing, and as long as it furthers our knowledge and possibly leads to a future where we can help victims of degenerative disorders i’ll accept it. Eventually science will need to disregard the armchair ethicists and truly break from convention in order to progress in the field of human lifespan extension anyway.

  81. Things only become practical if you start trying them when they’re impractical. Medical procedurese don’t spring forth fully formed.

    As long as he’s getting informed consent, I don’t care if his agreement with the patient involves the head being put on backwards.

  82. No. Current PNA-repair technology is limited to individual nerves and, unfortunately, doesn’t limit cell death or Wallerian degeneration. And recovery after severing STA is extremely poor because STA’s don’t regenerate. Now try this with millions of nerves. This is “probably” not “good enough”. You can do a LOT with existing nerve structures, stem cells, PEG fusion, antioxidants, micro-sutures etc to vastly improve the quality of life for a patient with nerve damage. Replacing their body? Why – there is no ethical reason.

  83. heart surgery is plumbing. Connecting millions of nerves while also ensuring nothing has passed the blood-brain barrier or would (your “good” cadaver) or has genetic implications? Not so easy (or needed). There is no “special sauce”. I think you are simplifying an extremely complicated, and dangerous, surgical procedure. Explain it to me, I have a degree in neurobiology. What is this “sauce” you mention? It’s better to focus on real science like stem cell therapies.

  84. The “border” analogy makes sense, but unfortunately not in the medical sense. A patient might need a heart-lung transplant, for instance as a result of late-stage heart disease, or a kidney transplant due to diabetes, or a liver transplant due to hepatitis. I.e RARELY if ever is a patient faced with “multi-organ” transplant needs. But let’s say there is. Someone is very old and organs are failing one after another. Years of smoking, drinking, stress, genetics etc add up. Will a new body help? In theory, yes of course. That is where this method isn’t even science fiction, it’s just bad science. There is no proof, method, or technique explained “in science” how this possibly could work. In theory, you could load up the brain into a virtual machine and live your life out in bliss, too. But fiction doesn’t mean it will work. It might, one day, somehow, but not where this is going. In a Star Trek future? maybe.

    If Canavero was a real doctor and ethical, he would be sharing his discoveries and techniques. He doesn’t. It isn’t like inventing a new type of internet search algorithm and keeping it secret. Advancing medical techniques and therapies is a public affair, for good reason, not just ethically. It is unheard of that someone calling themselves a doctor keeps a lid on the science. Just not done, except for quacks.

    Your point of both MS and Werdnig-Hoffman (which is what Canavero’s “star” patient suffers from) makes no sense from a medical point of view. Obviously the details of both patients aren’t known, but if someone has MS, their brain has lesions. A new body won’t help. A clear MRI pre-MS diagnosis could mean many different things, so why go through with a head transplant? With W-H, you get cell death (apoptotic) in the brain – thalamus and cerebral cortex. The survival rate for WH is only a few years. That Canavero chose to highlight this type of diseased patient as an example of someone who could benefit from a head transplant goes to show the guy isn’t a doctor. He is dangerous because he gives false hope and isn’t a scientist. There is a word for that.

  86. The reason for replacing the whole body below the head, is that you eliminate a whole body’s worth of problems in one go.

    Look, you can start with a single organ transplant. Relatively straightforward. Multi organ transplants get more complicated, the “border” you have to deal with expands. But like fencing in an area on a globe, eventually you reach a maximum border, and after that increasing the amount of the body replaced simplifies things, reduces the border again.

    You’ve got a guy whose whole body except his head is a mess, it would be more simple to swap everything in one go, than to replace one organ after another after another.

    Take my neighbor across the street. MS, a disease that destroys the ability of nerves to drive muscles. She’s wasting away, when we first met her she could walk with a walker, now she’s bed bound, soon she’ll not be able to command her diaphragm, and will stop breathing without aid.

    A head transplant would fix almost all of that in one operation.

  89. Constantly getting inputs that don’t match your expectations based on what you see could be very disorienting. It’s one thing if it’s a finger sensory nerve wired up to the wrong place, but what if nerves controlling say the diaphragm or heartbeat, etc. that are normally just background senses are now constantly grabbing your attention? Will the brain eventually re-assign these new sensory inputs? We just don’t know, it’s a big unknown.

  91. You can’t fix all cancers. Of course, with stage 4 cancer, you have to make sure there are no cancer cells floating around in the head, or it will just get carried into the new body and potentially start all over again. Even so, that would likely buy you several months or a year (of whatever quality of life, but quality of life always takes a back seat to length of life in treating advanced cancers).

    Regarding spinal cord injury, you find a good (and fresh) cadaver, cut the nerve cells above the break in the paralyzed person, cut the nerves cleanly in the paralyzed person to match, put them together with the special sauce and the previously paralyzed person might regain some mobility. I’m sure Christopher Reeves would be interested in this technology.

    It’s a little creepy, sure, but I bet the same things were said for the first person to get a pig’s heart valves implanted. Now it’s common.

  92. It’s not really a head transplant, the head stays the same. It’s a body transplant.

    Money invested is not an accurate predictor of success – in that case we’d have nuclear fusion reactors, and personal fuel-cell vehicles (GM reportedly spent $1 billion on that, before they went bankrupt in 2008).

  94. Actually, I have been. There is a huge difference from NPC type solutions and cutting off a head. The real question is why replace the entire head in the first place? There is no medical justification for that. At all. You can repair head and neck nerves (to some extent), replace the esophagus, graft arteries and other vessels, remove and treat cancers etc. The human body isn’t “modular”, especially when it comes to the function and interdependency the head has with the rest of the body. And, if therapies like NPC, stem cells etc are showing promise, why then replace the entire head? No need. This is a procedure concocted by a madman looking for a problem to solve. btw, here is a good article https://www.nature.com/articles/s12276-018-0054-9

  95. It isn’t that bad, as the arrangement of the spinal cord nerves is somewhat fixed. Yeah, you’d have a good deal of mismatch, you’d have odd things going on like being confused about which finger somebody was touching.

    But it would be an improvement over total paralysis. That’s the key: At the present state of the art, even if it was successful, you’d have to be in pretty bad conditions for it to be an improvement.

  96. I think it’s possible you haven’t been following the progress in spinal cord repair. You actually can pull it off *under laboratory conditions*. The problem is that very few people accidentally suffer clean spinal cord severing while already in an operating room. The cut has to be clean and new on both ends for it to work. Then you butt the two ends up against each other with treatments that cause the cut ends of the axons to fuse.

    The result is not 100%, not remotely, but is probably good enough that somebody who was dying or otherwise paralyzed would find it acceptable.

  97. Brian, head transplants are fake news, this isn’t science. It’s fiction. Canavero is a quack and dangerous. He also suffers from several psychological disorders which he admits to. One of them is narcissism, Most of all, articles like this does a huge disservice to anyone suffering from degenerative neuro-disease or paralysis (e.g., from accidents) etc. For this type of transplant to be successful you need (apart from the hundreds of other things that need to work) to be able to graft and “fix” nerves, millions of them. If this “doctor” actually had a method for accomplishing this it could benefit millions of people without having to replace their heads. He has no medical ethics. This is like posting an article about Dr. Mengele. Seriously dude.

  100. I don’t see how this can possibly work. Sure, with enough precision, you could disconnect and reconnect the same head on the same body, but a head on different body?? Everyone’s neck is different, and why should the nerves line up inside of it? The blood vessels might be close enough to get by, though even that, and the muscles around them, would be tough to match, even in apx. same-sized necks, but the nerves? That has to be different for everyone, and especially so if the patient has whole body paralysis or some other drastic debilitating condition, which would be the only reason to entertain such a radical procedure in the first place.

  101. This is a science / futurist site. People should keep their politics to themselves because it’s obviously going to be very divisive and add nothing to our purpose for being here. Calling him out is not worse. They should be called out.

  102. Note, I suspect the brain is up to the task of figuring out the new neural connections. After all, people people figure out how to do lots of things again, with therapy, after a debilitating stoke destroys parts of their brains.

  104. i guess no one really knows how much of our person and thoughts are based on the body we are born with.. learning a new body must mean something… its such a bizarre concept but im curious in a trainwreck sort of way

  108. So what is the basis for thinking that a body transplant would drive someone mad? Is it based on multiple viewings of Robocop, or is there something more behind it?

  109. How do you know the soul, whatever that is, does not stay with the brain? The brain must be consdidered the seat of consciousness. Seems like the most likely place for that soul thing to hang out.
    Where else would it reside, the butt?

  110. “You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that …”

    When surgeons connect donor limbs or organs, do you assert that the donor’s ‘soul’ is still linked to the body part? Now I really can’t say if a soul exists or not, but to my mind, if it did … a persons ‘soul’ would center or reside in the brain. I think it safe to say that the human mind/brain is the primary seat of conscious thought and general cognition.

    So when you say, we can’t transplant the soul … it may be as you say, whereas, we may be able to transplant a body that has no living container (the brain). Now it may also be possible that we don’t have this ‘soul’ that you speak of … I won’t comment further on this, for the fact … that I don’t have definitive knowledge for or against this assertion (which may be moot anyway given my contextual construct).

  111. God doesn’t exist you idiot. Its a fantasy story made up by humans. Same goes for money. When a lot of people start believing in it, it tend to become a ”reality”. millions of MRI scans of the brain further, and we never identified a soul. Even if the soul would exist (which it 100% don’t), it would be immaterial (otherwise the mri would have shown it) and immaterial things can’t hold energy, meaning that we can’t survive after death, because energy is what we are.

  112. “It contravenes the laws of God.”

    Um, which god, and written where?

    “You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul.”

    I tend to go with something Charles Platt once said along these lines, with respect to cryonics;

    “If souls exist, we don’t know the rules by which they operate.”

    “However, they will create one hell of a horror show, and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.”

    Wow. Do you have this same concern for those who, say, commit outright acts of genocide…?

  113. Well, it looks like we will find out first hand, what the implications are … which may in turn shed light on how accurate your religious convictions turn out to be.

  114. I would guess that the transplantee would be the ‘adoptive’ parent in the genetic sense … but in all else, the actualized parent contributor involved in the child’s conception.

    An even equally odd question would be, what would happen if the transplantee were to conceive with the reproductive partner of the donor’s body? … would the child be the stepson, or son? … actualized son by surgical proxy?

  115. I promise you this will never be successful. It contravenes the laws of God. You can sever a head and sew it on another body but you cannot transplant a soul. Only God can do that. However, they will create one hell of a horror show, and the perpetrators will face an eternity of judgement for contravening the will of God.

  117. I wonder if it would be beneficial to introduce gut microbes into each recipient awhile before the exchange.
    There is so many interesting outcomes that might be found if this succeeds.

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