Sergio Canavero

Sergio Canavero (born 1964) is an Italian neurosurgeon and author who attracted media attention after stating, in early 2015, that he will be able to perform the first successful human head transplant by 2017.^[1][2] Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old Russian with Werdnig–Hoffmann disease (type I spinal muscular atrophy) and rapidly declining health, has volunteered to offer his head for Canavero's studies.^[3]

Biography

Popular opinion about the potential head transplant has been generally negative, despite Canavero's original claims. Canavero was criticised specifically on ethical grounds,^[4] with Arthur Kaplan, head of medical ethics at Langone Medical Center, New York University, calling Canavero "out of his mind".^[5] There are also doubts as regards the state of technology and the time-frame in which Canavero says he will be able to successfully conduct the procedure.^[6][7]

Upon Canavero's controversial statements in early 2015, it was speculated that they were actually part of a viral marketing campaign for the game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, then an upcoming title. Proponents indicated supposed connections between the Metal Gear Solid games and Canavero and his works, including physical similarities with character Evangelos Constantinou who first appeared in a trailer. Canavero, in response, denied any connection with the game production company Konami.^[8]

In January 2016, Canavero and Xiaoping Ren from the Harbin Medical University in China co-authored the editorial article "Human head transplantation. Where do we stand and a call to arms",^[9] in which they complained that their HEAVEN (head anastomosis venture) project may be set to fail, due to "several parties at fault, and it would be too long a list, but standing at the very top is the current peer review system that vets research to be published". The two researchers made an appeal to private philanthropists, but in their appeal they also named and criticized five of them: Google’s Sergey Brin, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, 23 and Me’s Anne Wojcicki, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, and DST Global Milner. According to Canavero and Ren, the most recent Breakthrough Prizes bankrolled by the Silicon Valley billionaires were awarded for research that has not changed the prognosis of the related medical conditions, because "the billionaires still rely on the traditional peer review process". In the same editorial, Canavero and Ren also announced that they are now assembling a team of researchers from China and Russia, and pleaded to philanthropists and patients' associations for help with the head transplant project. At approximately the same time, Canavero and Ren also went directly to the mass media^[10] with claims (backed by videos) that they have carried successfully a head transplant on a live monkey in China, an experiment similar to the ones performed in the past by Vladimir Demikhov (1954) and Robert J. White (1970). The new element now, according to Canavero and Ren, is that they are ready to tackle the two main problems encountered by the previous efforts: the immunological rejection, and the reconnection of the spinal column ("spinal linkage"), the latter thanks in part to a work done by C-Yoon Kim, at Konkuk University School of Medicine in South Korea, on re-fusion of a mouse spinal cord using precision cutting and PEG (polyethylene glycol). The international group of Italian, Chinese, South Korean and Russian researchers plans to perform the first human head transplant on volunteer Valery Spiridonov.

References