Last week, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov,
announced that he will become the subject of the first
human head transplant ever performed. Val, who's
paralyzed from waist down, says he wants his head
removed from his non-functioning body and installed on
another person's able body.
He volunteered himself as a guinea pic after Italian
surgeon Sergio Canavero said head transplant was
possible and outlined the transplant technique he
intends to follow. But now a top surgeon said Val will
experience a death worse than death is he goes ahead
with this...
"A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly
declining health, Spiridonov is willing to take a punt on
this very experimental surgery and you can't really
blame him, but while he is prepared for the possibility
that the body will reject his head and he will die, his
fate could be considerably worse than death."
"I would not wish this on anyone," said Dr Hunt Batjer,
president elect of the American Association for
Neurological Surgeons. "I would not allow anyone to do
it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death."
Even if the transplant succeeds which is unlikely,
several medical experts say the world does not even
know it will do to Val's mind.
"There's no telling what the transplant - and all the new
connections and foreign chemicals that his head and
brain will have to suddenly deal with - will do to
Spiridonov's psyche. It could result in a hitherto never
experienced level and quality of insanity". - the surgeon
said
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