juansweetpotato wrote:Isn't there a two headed ghost in Cambodia Samouth?

..So when Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero first announced his intention to perform the first ever human “head transplant” by December 2017 – part of his “head anastomosis venture” or HEAVEN project – science fiction seemed to inch a little closer to science fact. Canavero’s idea involves a 36-hour surgery during which the head of a patient suffering from a debilitating disease would be fused at the spinal cord to a brain dead donor with an otherwise healthy body.

Despite scientists and surgeons voicing some serious doubts that such a massive undertaking would be successful, Canavero is adamant that the technology now exists – by employing his novel GEMINI protocol, he argues, the likelihood of success is around 90%.

But just how well do his claims stand to scientific scrutiny? Below are just three of the many important issues that haven’t been convincingly addressed...

...Canavero has a plan, delineated in a June 2013 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Surgical Neurology International and presented in 2015 as the keynote address of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons’s 39th annual conference. It’s a 36-hour, $20 million (£14 milion) procedure involving at least 150 people, including doctors, nurses, technicians, psychologists and virtual reality engineers...

In a specially equipped hospital suite, two surgical teams will work simultaneously - one focused on Spiridonov and the other on the donor’s body, selected from a brain-dead patient and matched with the Russian for height, build and immunotype. Both patients - anesthetized and outfitted with breathing tubes - will have their heads locked using metal pins and clamps, and electrodes will be attached to their bodies to monitor brain and heart activity. Next, Spiridonov’s head will be nearly frozen, ultimately reaching 12 to 15 degrees Celsius, which will make him temporarily brain-dead...

...In other words, Spiridonov might end up with a body that functions not much better than the one he left. Adler says each piece of Canavero’s method is viable from a strictly technical sense, but together there’s too much risk of failure—paralysis or death for Spiridonov. The challenges range from whether the axons in the joined section of the spinal cords will form any sort of meaningful connections to the possibility that Spiridonov’s brain will suffer irreparable damage when it is without blood flow.

Some skeptics are more outspoken. “In my opinion, this procedure has no feasibility at all,” says Dr. Lorenzo Pinessi, director of the Neurology Clinic at Italy’s University of Turin. “It is demented.”