We live in a world where the word “Impossible” does not exist.
After years of systematic reviews of randomized trials with animal specimens, a human test subject has finally emerged for the Head Transplant (Or, should I say Body Transplant?)
Dr Sergio Canavero, an Italian Neurosurgeon, made the announcement which shook the world. This will undoubtedly be one of the most controversial surgeries ever in the history of mankind. The transplant is slated for December 2017, and could cost a whopping $30million (I wouldn’t convert it to Nigerian Naira, for the sake of our collective cardiac safety)
This volunteer test subject is a 30 year old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov. He’s a computer scientist, and has a motor-neuron disease Werdnig-Hoffmann Disease, which has caused almost all his motor functions to deteriorate drastically. Spiridonov has lived almost his entire life on a wheel chair. For him, he has two terrible choices to make, but he sees the transplant as a lesser of two evils.
Did I tell you that; for the transplant to be completed, Dr Canavero and his team will need a body donor? Oh yes! They will need a young, brain-dead male patient. I guess they can source that anyway.
But the big question is; what is the proposed success margin of such procedures? Because, no doctor has ever succeeded in reconnecting a severed human spinal cord in the history of mankind.
The success of this kind of procedure will definitely chart a new course in the field of medicine. But with a failure in this, Dr Canavero will have a serious explanation to do.
The next question on my mind is; after the transplant, does the head own the body or does the body own the head? If the head owns the body, why is it not called Body Transplant? (Because the bad body was taken out and replaced with a good one. In the same way a heart transplant involves removing a bad heart and putting a good one).
Well, let us all wait and see how history will be made or marred.. The countdown has already begun.