First head transplant successfully carried out on monkey, claims surgeon

An Italian surgeon claims to have carried out the world’s first head transplant on a monkey and plans to repeat the procedure on a living human by the end of next year.

According to Dr.Canavero, researchers led by Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China, carried out a head transplant on a monkey. The Italian surgeon has been very vocal about the fact that he’ll perform the first human head transplant (or more accurately, body transplant) by 2017, in an attempt to cure paralysis. The monkey survived the procedure “without any neurological injury of whatever kind”, the surgeon said, but that it was killed 20 hours after the procedure for ethical reasons.

Other techniques to aid recovery could include spinal cord stimulation and the use of a negative pressure device to encourage the nerves to fuse, the New Scientist reported.

The newly-revealed success is likely to be an attempt to help generate funds for the ultimate aim of giving a head transplant to Valery Spriridonov, the Russian patient who has been chosen to be the first to undergo the procedure.

But if nothing else, this latest release shows that Canavero has his eyes fixed firmly on the prize, and that the plan for a human head transplant is steaming along, whether or not anyone else thinks that’s a good idea.

Now Canavero is now appealing to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to fund the first human head transplant.

“It’s science through public relations”, Arthur Caplan, of the New York University School of Medicine, told New Scientist. “When it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, I’ll be interested”.

Canavero said: “It’s important that people stop thinking this is impossible”.

Details of the procedures are set to appear the journals Surgery and CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics. “This is absolutely possible and we’re working towards it”.

A press release ahead of the publication said: “A full monkey head transplant has been successfully accomplished by Prof Ren’s group in China with the goal of testing cross-circulation and hypothermia as an effective neuroprotective strategy”. “This head transplantation-even the term is sensationalism”.

Additionally, Mr Canavero claims to have reconnected a mouse’s severed spinal chord, and will provide more evidence in the coming months via papers that will be published in several scientific journals.

Caplan added: “If he knew what he was doing, he would help people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries rather than prattling on about transplanting heads”.

Although it was capable of breathing without assistance, the monkey died eight days later – as the body eventually rejected the head.