A full body transplant could be a part of our world as soon as 2017.
Sergio Canavero, a doctor in Turin, Italy, has reportedly claimed that medical science has advanced far enough that a full body transplant is possible, bringing on responses of horror among others, according to the news outlet The Guardian.
Canavero, who reportedly recently published an outline of how the surgery for the full body transplant could be performed, told New Scientist magazine that he wanted to use body transplants to prolong the lives of people who were affected by terminal diseases.
Although the full body transplant would technically be for a good cause, the negative psychological effects of waking up with a new body would reportedly be a significant issue.
“The real stumbling block is the ethics,” Canavero stated.
He continued, “Should this surgery be done at all? There are obviously going to be many people who disagree with it.”
The process would reportedly involve removing a living person’s head, attaching it to a dead body, then reviving the reconstructed person and retraining their brain to use thousands of unfamiliar spinal cord nerves.
In the outline that Canavero put forth this month, doctors would reportedly cool the patient’s head and the donor’s body so their cells do not die during the operation.
The neck would reportedly then be cut through as the blood vessels are linked up with thin tubes. The spinal cord would reportedly be cut with an exceptionally sharp knife to minimize nerve damage.
The scale of this kind of surgery has already contributed to other health professionals turning away from the idea, according to the U.K’s The Independent.
“This is such an overwhelming project, the possibly of it happening is very unlikely,” stated Harry Goldsmith, professor of neurological surgery at the University of California.
However, the Italian doctor reportedly hopes to assemble a team to explore this surgery this June.
“If society doesn’t want it, I won’t do it. But if people don’t want it, in the US or Europe, that doesn’t mean it won’t be done somewhere else,” stated Canavero.
He added, “I’m trying to about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you.”
