Sergio Canavero

Sergio Canavero (* 1964 in Turin ) is an Italian neurosurgeon . He is best known for announcing a human head transplant for 2017.

life and work

Canavero studied medicine in Turin and was a neurosurgeon and professor in Turin until 2015. There he set up the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group (TANG), examined the use of electrical brain stimulation in Apallic Syndrome , Parkinson's Disease and in recovery from strokes, and did research on central pain , on which he wrote a monograph . Around 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications come from him.

On February 25, 2015, he announced in the New Scientist that he would transplant a human head (called cephalosomatic anastomosis , CSA) by 2017 at the latest and also shared this in a lecture at the annual congress of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons (AANOS) that same year in Annapolis with. He names the project Heaven (Head Anastomosis Venture) and also presented a possible patient, the Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, who is ill with incurable muscle wasting, but who will probably not be the first candidate for a head transplant.

There were already experiments on monkeys in the 1970s by Robert J. White in Cleveland, who also developed some techniques, such as cooling the brain down to around 10 degrees Celsius before it was separated. Canavero laments the massive criticism of his plan, which he says he has been working on for decades, and is looking for donors and supporters. However, he himself did not carry out any animal experiments (which he does not consider to be meaningful in principle in this case); he relies on a global circle of colleagues, such as Ren Xiaoping in Harbin in China, who was involved in the first hand transplant in Louisville in 1999 and in 2013 announced successful head transplants in mice (and in a monkey that had been euthanized after 20 hours for ethical reasons). Canavero wants to sever the head relatively high between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae with the sharpest possible cut. The coalescence of the nerves is said to be promoted by polyethylene glycol (PEG). For this he cites a study by the Düsseldorf Professor of Molecular Neurobiology Hans Werner Müller , which provides indications for the usability of PEG as a matrix for such a coalescence of nerve endings, but according to Müller himself only serves basic research and is by no means practical. The Korean veterinarian C-Yoon Kim (Konkuk University, Seoul), who is also in contact with Canavero, announced certain successes with PEG in head transplants of dogs. Canavero can only carry out the operation itself with the support of other surgeons and other specialists (2 teams with a total of 80 surgeons are planned, doubled by additional medical staff), it should take at least 36 hours and cost over 10 million dollars. He himself wants to take on the part that involves bringing together the millions of spinal cord nerves. He does not expect complete success and would be satisfied with a new connection of 10 to 20 percent of the nerves. At the end of 2015, however, he still said that new innovations such as electrical stimulation via the spinal cord would be necessary. The patient should lie in an artificial coma for 3 weeks after the operation to prevent movement during the reconnection phase of the spinal cord nerves. The operation is likely to take place in China (or Asia), although Canavero regrets that the first operations are unlikely to take place in Europe (particularly Italy) or North America due to general opposition from the medical community and the public. If the financing is in place and his team has been put together, he estimates two years of intensive preparation time. In November 2017, it became known that Canavero's planned transplant of a human head in China would be banned by the local health authorities.

The long-time editor of the journal Surgery Michael Sarr , in his own words, was initially very skeptical about articles submitted by Canavero, but Canavero insisted and was finally able to convince him to publish a symposium on the topic in 2016. He considers the operation to be a tour de force, but the many individual steps would have been carried out individually and in some cases routine, even if each with its own inherent risks. Canavero sees no ethical problems that ultimately only the patient has to decide freely about (and, according to Canavero, even the body donor has something from the operation, since there are possible descendants of him).

White had also toyed with the idea at times in the 1970s, but at that time there were no immunosuppressive drugs available for transplants as they are today (his operated monkeys died after a week at the latest due to their own immune system).

Canavero is married and has two children.

He does martial arts. In Italy he also published a book on the seduction of women (Donne Scoperte).

Fonts

• with Vincenzo Bonicalci: Central Pain Syndrome, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 2nd edition 2011
• Immortal. Why the consciousness is not your brain, 2014
• with Edoardo Rosati: Head transplantation and the quest for immortality, 2015 (Italian original: Il cervello immortale, Sperling & Kupfer , Milan 2015)
• as editor: Textbook of Cortical Brain Stimulation, De Gruyter Open 2014
• HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI), Surgical Neurology International, Volume 4, pp. 335-342, June 13, 2013, online
• The “Gemini” spinal cord fusion protocol: Reloaded, Surgical Neurology International, Volume 6, 2015, p. 18, PMC 4322377 (free full text)
• with Xiaoping Ren: Human head transplantation. Where do we stand and a call to arms, Surgical Neurology International, January 28, 2016, online
• with X. Ren, EV Orlova, EI Maevsky, V. Bonicalzi: Brain protection during cephalosomatic anastomosis, Surgery, Volume 160, July 2016, pp. 5–10, PMID 27143608 .
• with Georg Kindel: Medicus magnus: The revolution in medicine and how we use it for ourselves , Edition a , Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-99001-243-7

literature

• Vivian Pasquet: Body Los, Der Spiegel No. 42, 2016, p. 106

theatre

• Markus Zohner (text and direction): Radio Frankenstein, play about Prof. Sergio Canavero, and the planning, preparation and implementation of the first human head transplant. Coproduction by the Markus Zohner Theater Compagnie with the Joint Research Center of the European Commission . World premiere: September 9, 2017, Lugano / Switzerland, English premiere: October 5, 2017, Joint Research Center, Ispra / Italy.

Web links

• Biography at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons

Individual evidence

1. ↑ According to the Guardian, his contract was terminated by mutual agreement between him and the clinic after his plans for a head transplant made waves and were rejected by a majority of Italian doctors and also by his hospital colleagues. Tom Lament, I'll do the first human head transplant , The Guardian, October 3, 2015. He had worked in the clinic for 22 years.
2. ^ The Guardian, October 3, 2015, loc. cit. After Canavero, enough experimental animals have already been killed and the research for the planned intervention has already been completed.
3. ↑ Estrada, Müller u. a .: Long-lasting significant functional improvement in chronic severe spinal cord injury following scar resection and polyethylene glycol implantation. Neurobiol. Dis., Vol. 67, 2014, pp. 165-179, PMID 24713436 .
4. ↑ Der Spiegel 42, 2006, p. 111
5. ^ The Guardian, October 3, 2015, loc. cit.
6. ↑ Spinning or an ambitious plan?, Ärzte-Zeitung, May 22, 2015
7. ↑ The Guardian, October 2, 2015. He also expects a partial self-growing together, citing cases of partial convalescence in spinal cord injuries from the past and pointing out the difference to accidental injuries that a very sharp incision is made here.
8. ↑ orf.at: China wants to ban planned head transplants . Article dated November 25, 2017, accessed November 25, 2017.
9. ↑ Guardian, October 3, 2015, loc. cit.
10. ↑ Review article by those involved in the project also appeared in CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics in 2016 as well as in Surgery . The latter journal in a special issue, Volume 22, Issue 4, 2016, Special Issue: Special Focus: New Frontier-Allo-Head and Body Reconstruction. doi : 10.1111 / cns.2016.22.issue-4