EshanMaitra
Even our average science fiction stories or movies cannot comprehend such measure! But recently an Italian doctor has made such bold announcements. That, he will be performing a successful head transplant of a living human to another body! Not sure, this will become another episode of Ripley’s Believe It or Not tragedy or the greatest medical surgery breakthrough ever. This would huge leap into the futuristic medical theories.The approximate cost of the operation would be over $20.5m and would take about 36 hours for full procedure. This will require constant focus of two teams consists of at least 150 people. From doctors and nurses to technicians, psychologists and virtual reality engineers.
The dreamer’s name is Sergio Canavero. He first presented it to the public hearing at the American Academy of Neurological and OrthopedicSurgeons’ 39th annual conference last year. Before that he published his papers in June 2013. He mentioned, as a boy he read this in a Spider-man comic book, how Dr. Strange was successful in transplanting his own head. From then Canavero was always fascinated with the idea, obsessed with neuro-surgery and spinal cord reattachment. Not only he published new theories, but also he performed some amazing surgeries on animals in past years. With the collaborating of Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical University in China, he just recently was successful in transplanting a monkey’s head. He pointed that a brilliant American Neurosurgeon Dr. Robert White conducted the similar successful transplant on a rhesus monkey in 1970. Even with the former not so developed tools he pulled it through. Though the monkey only lived few healthy days. But with the
modern Spinal Cord Fusion Nanotechnology unbelievable wonders can be done, Canavero believes. Before that his very close friend and colleague C-Yoon Kim of the Konkuk University School of Medicine in South Korea published a study about his groundbreaking work in the journal ‘Spinal Cord’, re-establishing motor movements in mice. Though he faced much critics and defaming during the conference at Annapolis, Maryland. He just threw an ethical bomb at them saying, if anyone else was in his shoes who had the would be needing assistance with defecation and urination and living a life without sex.Right away everyone present there, hushed to total silence.
From his great presentation this inspired a patient of Werdnig-Hoffman disease (A muscle-wasting disorder). The life has been very hard on this 31-year-old Russian program manager in the software development field Valery Spiridonov. He is very much excited and desperate to be able to volunteer in Canavero’s venture. Canavero named this two-part procedure HEAVEN (Head Anastomosis Venture) and Gemini (Spinal Cord Fusion).Canavero plans to do the surgery as soon as possible.
But many dismissing Canavero’s plan as some form fantasy. Specially Arthur Caplan, founder of the Division of Bioethics at New York University’s School of Medicine. He directly called Canaveroa charlatan, a quack and a self-promoter. He also said, Canavero is only playing some Looney Tune and peddling false hopeonto others. But in 1999, White predicted that, the incomprehensible theory based science fiction stories willbecome clinical reality just within early 21st century. Even the Dr. Frankenstein. The whole world, even Canavero’s naysayers are waiting for the intriguing answer.