There have been many medical breakthrough all over the world in medical field but just when we thought we had seen it all in the transplant of different body organs, a daredevil scientists wants to play God by doing a human head transplant.. First of its kind.
MEANING OF HEAD TRANSPLANT .
A human head transplant is not far from what you are thinking.
It's a surgical operation that involves grafting the head of one organisms onto the body of another organisms. - wikipedia
This experiment has started since early 1900's till date and so far, no long lasting success has been recorded not until an Italian Doctor, Sergio canavero made it known to the world that it is possible and intends to carry out his first ever head transplant on human being in December, 2017.
PROCEDURES FOR THE HEAD TRANSPLANT.
At First, I thought this was a joke but I dug into further research, it seems the italian neuro surgeon actually knows what he is doing. I will be stating few basics of his procedure, to know more about the procedure, click here
As the name implies, you don't expect the experiment to be a quick procedure and according to Dr canavero, from his estimation, he will be working with about 150 doctors and nurses for about 36 hours. The patience body Will be cooled to about 50 degree Fahrenheit to reduce tissue atrophy, giving the team about an hour before the brain dies, to cut the tissues around the neck with major blood vessels linked with tiny tube.
The spinal cord of both patients and donor is severed with transparent diamond blade, then the heads of both parties are removed simultaneously by a custom made crane to carefully lower the patient head onto the donors body. Once this is done, the two ends of the spinal cord is fused together by a chemical called polyethylene glycol. (This chemical has proven to be successful in regeneration of spinal cord in animals). The muscles and blood from the donor body is joined to the patient body. As soon as all this are done successfully, the patient is put into an induce coma for a month for close observation and to reduce the movement of the neck.
VOLUNTEER FOR THE HEAD TRANSPLANT.
Just when I was lying on my bed, thinking of who is crazy enough to volunteer his life for such crazy experiment, it turns out that there have been series of entries that filed to undergo such surgery and among the series of entries that filed for the experiment, I don't know if I should say the lucky or unlucky one turned out to be a 30 years old Russian computer scientist, Valery spiridonov, who is inflicted with a disease called werdnig-hoffman disease.
According to Valery spiridnov, though he's scared of been the first person to undertake the experiment, he has no choice because as each years pass, his health keeps deteriorating and is very rare with people experiencing such disease to live more than 20yrs. So, his lucky to be alive till the age of thirty
MAJOR CHALLENGES.
There are lots of challenges to encounter in such experiment but I will be talking on few of them.
- The major objection people have is the fusion of spinal cord, which has never been done before and it is impossible to connect millions of nerves perfectly to the body of the donor.
- For the experiment to take place, the brain has to be cooled to 12-15°C. And base on the research of Dr Christopher Winfree, a professor in neuro surgery in Columbia University, only three to four out of ten are able to survive the brain Cooling process.
- There is a reason all the animals they tried such experiment died and the highest that ever lived, was a monkey that stayed for 8days and it died horrifically.the reason for all these quick death after surgery is because, the immune system of the body rejects the foreign element and attack it.
CONCLUSION
There is this popular saying that:
If there is a Will , there is a way.
With the high rise of technology and collection of experts who have also tried this same type of experiments individually, you never can tell, the surgery might be a success or they might come up with a shocking discovery that mankind have ever seen like Dr Vladimir in 1959, whose two headed dog experiment that live for only 4 days, paved way for organ body transplant..
But for my opinion, I believe God has a reason for keeping the brains alive for almost 10 minutes when the body is dead.. Who knows, head transplant, might be the reason??? 😛😛😛
So, we all have to wait and see what comes out of this experiment that's going to take place December 2017.
Medical students, pls do not try this at home.
Cheers..
