How did a human head transplant end? Head transplant of a Russian programmer - scientific breakthrough or false hope? Is a head transplant possible: comments by Russian scientists.

In other words, another experiment was carried out. It lasted 18 hours. It was conducted by the team of Harbin Medical University, headed by Dr. Ren Xiaoping. During the procedure, it was possible to restore the spine, nerves and blood vessels. And without this, there can be no talk of such a transplant.

It is appropriate to recall that sensational reports about her did not appear today. At first, Sergio Canavero was going to hold it in Germany or the UK. And the first patient was to be a programmer from Vladimir Valery Spiridonov, suffering from a severe genetic disease that makes it impossible for a person to move. Some time passed, and it was announced that not Valery Spiridonov, but the presumably 64-year-old Chinese Wang Hua Min would be the first person to undergo such an operation, since Wang was in a worse condition than Valery, and China joined this project.

In September 2016, a neurosurgeon published a video showing animals (a mouse and a dog) surviving a trial operation. During the experiment, polyethylene glycol was used, which was injected into the affected areas of the spinal cord and contributed to the restoration of connections between thousands of neurons. Polyethylene glycol, the same bio-glue that Canavero pinned his hopes on from the very beginning, is able to glue the nerve endings, which is necessary for this transplant. And here's Canavero's new message: a live human head transplant will take place soon.

The operation is technically feasible. But the main issue has not been resolved: the effectiveness of restoring nerve contacts between the head and body of the donor.

At the request of "RG", the director of the National Medical Research Center for Transplantology and Artificial Organs named after Shumakov, Academician Sergei Gauthier comments on the message:

Progress cannot be stopped. But when it directly concerns health, human life, in no case should one be in a hurry. The first is always, one way or another, associated with risk. And the risk must be justified. Technically, body-to-head transplantation is quite feasible. By the way, it is the body to the head, and not vice versa. Because the brain is an identity, it is a personality. And if the brain dies, there is nothing to do. It makes no sense to transplant someone else's head to a still living body, it will be a different person. The question is whether it is possible to help this head, which contains a human personality, by transplanting some donor body, so that this head is supplied with blood, oxygen, and can receive nutrients from the digestive system of this body. Technically, I repeat, such an operation is quite feasible. But the main issue has not been resolved: the effectiveness of restoring nerve contacts between the head and body of the donor. And conducting experiments on corpses, on animals about which reports are received, is a normal, generally accepted course of events, a generally accepted development of methodology.

Expert: “This is a very beautiful PR!”

Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero performed a human head transplant in China. Successful, he says. Meanwhile, the public is perplexed, because we are talking about a head transplant to a corpse. Why transplant a head into a corpse?

Canavero became famous in Russia after the programmer Valery Spiridonov, suffering from a serious illness,.

Now Canavero refused this operation. According to Spiridonov, the surgeon received funding in China and specifically for a certain type of experiment...

Russian doctors called the current news about the "successful head transplant" a beautiful PR campaign.

From the point of view of PR, this is a very competent move, they are pure adventurers, - Dmitry Suslov, head of the laboratory of experimental surgery at the Academician Pavlov State Medical University, Dmitry Suslov, told MK, - In fact, the operation performed by Canavero is a training filed as a world sensation.

The expert said that such training operations are carried out by all transplantologists in any country in the world that can boast of success in this most complex area of ​​medicine. Moreover, mostly young doctors practice on corpses, who are still afraid to let them near a living body.

We can’t talk about any success here, - Suslov noted, - They took a dead head, sewn it to a dead body. The only thing that can be said here is that they worked clearly, sewn on purely technically competently.

Russian doctors also do not dare to talk about any discoveries during the operation. Most of the actions that are needed to sew the head to the body, any self-respecting surgeon should be honed to automatism. A vascular suture should be done practically with closed eyes by any doctor who performs operations on the heart and blood vessels. Sutures on large nerves are for neurosurgeons.

As for the past “merits” of the Canavero team, which were also noisily discussed by the whole world - head transplants to a monkey, here the doctors also only shake their heads skeptically. According to them, maintaining life in the severed head of an animal is an experiment of the beginning of the last century. The then researchers in white coats succeeded in such manipulations very well.

However, our transplantation still left a small chance for foreign adventurers to win in the future. Theoretically, it is possible to transplant a head to a living person. And there is even a chance that both the head and other parts of the body will function normally after the operation. But for this you will have to make a real scientific breakthrough - to learn how to splice the neurons of the spinal cord.

If someone manages to do this, it's the Nobel Prize, - says Suslov, - A huge number of people with spinal injuries will get a chance to get back on their feet and live fully. But so far, such experiments have been carried out only on rats. And at the moment we have only a partial understanding of how this should be done.

The world's first human head transplant will take place in China. This was announced by the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who is going to perform this unique operation. Formerly Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. But now, apparently, he decided to change his plans.

30-year-old Valery Spiridonov has a complex genetic disease - spinal muscular atrophy. He is practically unable to move. Everyone expected that Valery would become the first person in history to receive a body transplant. Or the head, there is no consensus among doctors on how to call this transplant. He has been preparing for the most complicated and yet unique operation since 2015.

"I'm not trying to commit some kind of sophisticated suicide. No, it's not. I'm happy with what I have. And I have confidence that everyone understands what they are doing. It's just that someone technically should be first. Why not me?" he said.

The transplant was supposed to be performed by a neurosurgeon from Italy, Sergio Canavero. Spiridonov flew to the USA to meet with him after Internet consultations.

And now, six months before the planned operation, the news comes: the first patient to receive a head transplant will not be a Russian, but a citizen of China. The official reason is as follows: they decided to carry out the operation in China, and the donor and recipient must belong to the same race.

“We will have to look for donors among the locals. And we cannot give the snow-skinned Valery the body of a person of a different race. We cannot name the new candidate yet. We are in the selection process,” said Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon.

However, many are sure that it is more about funding and national prestige. In China, a head transplant operation is funded by the state. A separate clinic in Harbin will be allocated for this. Dozens of local doctors will help the Italian neurosurgeon. And the choice of the patient, most likely, will also fall on a citizen of China.

"The Chinese decided on this operation because they want to get the Nobel Prize and to recommend their country as an engine of scientific progress. This is a kind of new space race," Canavero is sure.

The operation is expected to take about 36 hours and cost $15 million. After freezing, the heads will be separated from the bodies. And the recipient's head will be attached to the donor's body with the help of special biological glue. Polyethylene glycol will be injected into the affected areas of the spinal cord, with its help it has already been possible to restore connections between thousands of neurons in animals.

Trial operations on patients in a state of clinical death are planned for autumn 2017. This is necessary to hone the technique of surgical manipulations. Previously, Sergio Canavero had already succeeded in sewing on a second mouse head and transplanting a head into a monkey. However, the monkey was euthanized 20 hours after the operation. And the transplanted mouse head did not send impulses to other parts of the body.

And many neurosurgeons still doubt that when performing an operation on a person, it will really be possible to successfully fuse the spinal cord and preserve the vital functions of the brain.

"Technically, there are many problems with stitching many vessels, nerves, bones. But these are solvable options. The main problem is how to make impulses from the head through the stitched spinal cord go down and back? Unfortunately, this technique does not work yet, there is no such technique ", says the Russian doctor.

The Italian surgeon himself estimates the chances of success as 90 percent. And I am sure that this will be a breakthrough in the field of transplantation, which will give a chance for life to people with many serious diseases - from spinal muscular atrophy to currently incurable forms of cancer.

In China, for the first time, a head was transplanted from one dead person to another. It was originally planned that the head of the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov would be transplanted onto the donor's body, but the story had a sad end. The surgeon refused to operate on a patient from Russia.

On Friday, November 17, the world's first human head transplant took place in China. True, the head was transplanted from one dead body to another.

The point of such a transplant was to successfully connect the spinal cord, nerves and blood vessels. And as the surgeon Sergio Canavero assured, he succeeded quite successfully. Earlier it was planned to transplant the head of the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov. But this story ended sadly - the operation was canceled.

The beginning of the story

Recall that in early 2015, Italian doctor Sergio Canavero announced that he was ready to transplant a head from a living volunteer to a donor body. This information was seen by the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, and could not but respond. The fact is that Spiridonov suffers from a congenital disease - Werdnig-Hoffman syndrome. Because of this, his back muscles are almost completely atrophied. That is, a 32-year-old guy is practically immobilized, and over time this situation is aggravated. The surgeon met with Valery personally and was convinced of the sincerity of his intentions, his readiness to take risks.

Fact! Despite the fact that Valery practically cannot move without the help of a wheelchair, he leads an active life. The guy has been working since the age of 16, he is a successful programmer. He travels a lot, constantly communicates with interesting people. Therefore, as he himself said in an interview, you should not think that he wants to die in this way.

The operation was scheduled for December 2017. The doctor and the patient had no doubts that it would be difficult to find a donor. But it is possible, because every day people get into fatal car accidents, and some are sentenced to death. It was among them that it was planned to find a donor body.

However, these plans never came to fruition. The fact is that the sponsor of the operation, the Government of China, insists that the patient be a citizen of this country. In addition, it is important that the donor be of the same race as the patient. It is not possible to transplant Spiridonov's head onto the body of a Chinese. That is why all preparations for the operation had to be frozen. And it is difficult to say whether Spiridonov will be operated on in the future.

The essence of the operation

Previously, Sergio conducted similar successful experiments only on mice. He transplanted the head from one mouse to another. But the operation to transplant the monkey's head was unsuccessful. First, the spinal cord was not connected, but only the blood vessels. Secondly, the animal was in great pain afterward, and the doctors had to euthanize him after 20 hours. That is why many scientists are horrified by what Hanavero is about to do.

The surgeon himself is very optimistic. He declares that he will definitely do such operations again. In addition, in the future, he plans to transplant the brain of an elderly person into the body of a young donor. So, according to him, it will be possible to conquer death.

It is interesting! It was previously announced that the operation to transplant the head of a living person will last 36 hours. After the patient for 4 weeks should be introduced into an artificial coma. And after this time, strong immunosuppressants will be injected into him so that the body does not reject the head.

Russian scientists also have grandiose plans in this direction. By 2025, they want to learn how to transplant a human brain into a robot body. This will help to make a significant breakthrough in the field of science.

And in the story of the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, everything is rather sad. The promised head transplant has yet to take place. Although it may not be the end yet.

In November 2017, foreign media were stirred up by the news of the world's first human head transplant operation. A little later, the sensation quickly spread through Russian information channels. The operation was carried out by a group of Chinese specialists at Harbin University. The process was led by Dr. Ren Xiaoping. The manipulation lasted about 18 hours and, according to Xiaoping, was successful. The doctors connected the elements of the spine, vessels and nerves, but, of course, they did not resuscitate the "patient": at this stage in the development of science, this is impossible.

Sergio Canavero: populist or popularizer of science?

Canavero enthusiastically told people about the achievements of his Chinese colleagues and the essence of their experiment. He assured the public that he would certainly become the first surgeon destined to save a human life in this way. In numerous interviews, he said that he was writing a serious scientific work on the topic of surgery and trapsplantology. He promised to finish this scientific work soon and publish it for a wide audience.

Back in 2013, the Italian openly declared his desire to conduct a head transplant experiment. After the success of his Chinese colleagues, the doctor was inspired and spoke with confidence about the reality of such an operation in the near future. He constantly referred to studies allegedly carried out by him, and boldly gave optimistic forecasts for the near future.

It is interesting!
It was rumored that Canavero had already invented a unique gel that connects the smallest nerve cells of the spine.

Valery Spiridonov and his story

Sergio Canavero personally met with the young man. This allowed the surgeon to be convinced of his determination. The doctor's conversation with a potential patient made an impression on the world community, but the head transplant to the Russian programmer did not take place - neither in 2018, nor later. If you really look at things, in the near future such intervention is impossible, based on the following reasons:

It is difficult to find a donor body;
- world science has not yet "grown up" to such transplants;
- it is difficult to imagine the psychological situation through which the patient will have to go.

They say that the operation could not take place because foreign specialists refused to operate on a patient from Russia. This is not true. In many ways, the latest news related to Valery is wrong - partly due to the populism that Canavero was engaged in. On the one hand, the programmer is "unlucky", so the story has a sad ending: he is destined to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But if you really look at things, such an operation is technically impossible either in 2018 or in 2019. It may take decades to translate it into reality - and it is not a fact that such a practice will immediately become successful.

Is a head transplant possible: comments by Russian scientists

Russian surgeon Alexei Zhao believes that there is a huge time gap between experimental and real surgical interventions. Of course, the Italian Canavero can be called a populist, but it was he who aroused people's interest in the topic of treating patients who are completely immobilized. When separating the head from the body, surgeons have to deal with a complete rupture of the cervical spinal cord. There is no problem in sewing a head onto another body. But even if the operation is successful, and the surgeon does everything anatomically correct, the body will not "obey" the other head. The limbs and shoulders will remain motionless, so the operation does not make any sense.

The surgeon can connect the large great vessels of the neck. The patient's kidneys and heart will work for some time, but there will be no connection between the central nervous system and the body, because its main element is the spinal cord, torn in the neck. It is not yet possible to restore this gap and the function of the spinal cells. Even if a person survives after the operation, he will not be able to control the processes of urination and serve himself.

Axons are processes of nerve cells that sometimes reach a meter in length. These processes carry impulses from cells to vital organs. The structure of axons is so complex that it is impossible to restore them "manually". It remains to be theoretically assumed that it is possible to create a unique material that could connect them. The gel that the Italian Canavero mentioned in his populist lectures does not yet exist. It will take more than a dozen years to create such material, and no one specialist alone can do it.

A bit of history: Vladimir Demikhov and his two-headed dog

At that time, transplantation was just beginning its development path. Scientists did not know that the body rejects all foreign bodies, producing immune cells. When scientists began to practice heart transplantation, they began to create immunosuppressants. These are drugs that the recipient must take constantly so that there is no rejection of the donor organ.

Interesting fact!
A stuffed animal of one of Demikhov's two-headed dogs is among the exhibits of the State Biological Museum named after K.A. Timiryazev in Moscow.

Sklifosovsky Institute: research continues

Is it possible to transplant the head of a living person to another body, and how did it end in the case of Valery Spiridonov? Valery's story, unfortunately, had no continuation. Probably, the research of Russian scientists will not allow to put an end to it, and the dreams of an ambitious Italian surgeon will someday become a reality.