Sergio Canavero desire to transplant a head , and we ca n’t look away . Despite our continued agnosticism , he does seem to be making onward motion . “ Seem ” being the functional Word of God here , because others still are n’t win over by the evidence .
Canavero and a squad of Chinese doctors at Harbin Medical Center have announce that they ’ve successfully sever and re - attached a spine in rats . Their paper , published in the journal systema nervosum centrale Neuroscience and Therapeutics , does n’t mention fountainhead transplanting . But re - attach a spinal column would be one of the many necessary hurdles should his squad even try a school principal swap in man .
Before we get to the medical prognosis of human straits transplants , permit ’s take a flavor at this novel field of study . The team opened up fifteen lowlife and slice up their spinal cords , although the study notes that “ no opening resulted . ” Then , six mastery rotter welcome a saline injection in the excision , and nine received an injection of polyethylene diol there instead . This content , the investigator wrote , could “ restore the integrity of sharply discerp face fiber or seal the membrane of damaged neurons , ” based on preceding inquiry , by fusing the fibre back together .
Image: Ryan F. Mandelbaum/Brandonng06/Wikimedia Commons
All but one of the rats , a saline control , survived the mathematical operation . None of the control could walk afterwards , but all of the polyethylene glycol - inject git regained at least some of their walk power a month afterward .
These experiments are a passel like the ones that the researcherspreviously performedin rat and dogs , but those run suffer some contestation , as we reported ; the samples were little , control were lose , and there was n’t test copy that the investigator had wholly sever the spine .
That ’s sort of the trouble here , too . One researcher , Jerry Silver , from Case Western Reserve University , Ohio , had a massive heap of agnosticism to lump on the theme . The conclusion implies that the researchers had only severed and repaired part of the spinal cord , not the whole thing . The recovery scores were completely unrealistic throw only a month of convalescence sentence , he enjoin . The team did n’t demonstrate that axons , the tenacious part of the nerve cellphone , had actually grown back .
Canavero has take on like incredulity for his retiring work . Last yearhe claimedto transplant a rapscallion caput , and that the monkey outlive for 20 hours post - surgical process , but that seemed like an effort to get closet , and the call did n’t get with a published paper ( I ca n’t find it if it ’s already been released ) . Also , if you ’ve scan the whole marriage offer , it soundsinsane , and critic mean it ’s based on “ bad science . ”
That being said , Newsweekreportsthat , while a Formosan subject will supervene upon the Russian gentleman’s gentleman whovolunteeredfor the first transplant , the team still plans to perform the operation in December . Canavero said he ’d have a “ global ” press conference with further detail .
Listen , Canavero — we’re by all odds interested , but yield the extreme nature of such an operation , no one is give out to believe you until others have reproduced your method — that ’s just how science works .
Or until some dude is walking around with a mark fresh body .
[ CNS Neuroscience and TherapeuticsviaNewsweek ]
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