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Monkeys may be next in line to receive successful head transplants that enable them to survive "at least for a little while" -- possibly paving the way for similar surgery on humans.
Researchers at China's Harbin Medical University, led by surgeon Xiaoping Ren, are looking to perform the pioneering transplants on long-tailed macaque monkeys after performing similar surgery on more than 1,000 mice.
According to the Wall Street Journal, who shadowed Dr Ren during a 10-hour operation, a mouse was able to move and even open its eyes a few hours after receiving its new head -- although it was unable to survive unaided much longer.
However, Ren and his team claim to be in the process of refining the highly complex and painstaking procedure, using tiny tubes to allow oxygenated blood to travel from the rodents' brains to their new bodies, and monkeys look set to be next under the knife. The surgery will only connect a tiny amount of the primates' spinal nerve fibres, but it's hoped that it should be enough to retain voluntary muscle movement and other of the monkeys' vital functions.
It remains to be seen just how successful the transplants will be, but Ren hopes that his primate patients will enable to survive a short while without life support. But it won't be the first time that such a procedure has been carried out. Back in the 70s, brain surgeon Robert J. White successfully attached one monkey's head to another's body. The measure of the operation's success? When the monkey woke up, it (reportedly...) tried to bite off a doctor's finger.
However, Ren wants to go one step further. He hopes that the research might one day be able to help humans with otherwise healthy brains who have suffered spinal-cord injuries or muscle-wasting conditions that have left them wheelchair bound.
The debate around head transplants has been long-running and dogged by controversy -- from questions surrounding the fairness of such animal testing to the ethical implications if a successful transplant is carried out on humans. Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has already outlined plans to carry out a full human head transplant in the next two years, on a Russian patient with Werdnig-Hoffmann disease -- although it would technically be more accurate to refer to this as a bodytransplant, as it's the person with the head receiving the new body part. (This isn't to be confused with a whole body transplant, in which an organism's brain is transplanted into the skull of another.)
Beyond the predictable 'Frankenstein' headlines, there are also various obstacles to overcome before the surgery becomes practical for humans, from funding to medical issues, such as how to prevent the human immune system from rejecting a new head.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Robert Truog, director of Harvard Medical School's Center for Bioethics, said he sees head transplants as "something we're going to see over the next however many years".
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
