Tuesday 7 July 2015

First Ever Head Transplant

Controversial neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has announced that he plans to carry out the first ever full head transplant within the next two years. Before the end of 2017 he believes he will have successfully removed the head from one human and successfully grafted it, spinal cord and all, to the body of another human. The difficult part, some say the impossible part, will be successfully creating a functioning junction between the two spinal cords. He intends to use polyethylene glycol, a drug used to form bridges between the fat membranes in nerve cells, to achieve this. The drug has been used with mixed measures of success in animals and there is certainly a cadre of scientists out there who say getting this to properly work is a non-trivial problem to overcome. Time will tell.

sergio canavero, neurosurgeon, head transplant
Sergio Canavero


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