Dr Strange meets Dr Frankenstein

• Autores: Nic Fleming
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3149, 2017, págs. 39-41
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Fleming details neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero's motives and scientific credibility in performing a human head transplant. Unperturbed, two years ago Canavero agreed to help set up a team to carry out the procedure in China, working with Xiao-Ping Ren, an orthopaedic surgeon at Harbin Medical University who helped with one of the first hand transplants, in 1999. At the time of writing, Canavero claims several papers supporting the feasibility of human head transplantation will soon be published, that an operation could go ahead by the end of this year and that a "game-changing" announcement is imminent in China. Canavero calls his proposed procedure the head anastomosis venture, or HEAVEN. He says it would begin by cooling the donor body and recipient's head to delay tissue death. The heads would be detached and the donor body attached to the recipient's head. Polyethylene glycol would help fuse the cords by encouraging the fat in adjoining cells to mesh together. Stimulation from implanted electrodes would help to strengthen nerve connections.