Controversial professor has fused ruptured spinal cords in mice
Controversial professor fused severed spinal cords in mice
Italian-born Professor Sergio Canavero, who plans to perform head transplants in humans later this year, says he has successfully fused severed spinal cords in nine mice.
Canavero is known for his controversial experiments in conducted on animals. Under his scalpel went dogs or monkeys, who re heads were swapped. Some re animals, according to the professor, lived for more than 20 hours after the head transplantation. – Each of these experiments is a small step towards the first head transplant surgery in humans – Canavero said.
This time Canavero conducted a pr ould with the fusion of the severed spinal cord. An Italian professor with a team of surgeons severed the spinal cord in nine mice. After which, with the help of specially crafted polyethylene oxide (PEG), kt rgo he used as glue, successfully reconstructed the severed spinal cord. Canavero had already described this preparation, as a special biological glue, kt ry may be the key to successful head transplantation in the future.
– Critics say a severed spinal cord is impossible to repair, so a human head transplant is also impossible – Canavero said in an interview with „Newsweek”. – My recent experience shows that it can, however. Scans clearly show the reconstructed spinal cord in a mouse – added the professor.
The first pr to be performed with PEG by surgeons back in the first half of the last century. Pr b was then to fuse the spinal cord in ps. The same preparation was used by Canavero in April this year, during a controversial experiment in which the rym transplanted a rat’s head into the body of another rat.
In the latest experiment „Dr. Frankenstein”, because that’s the nickname Canavero earned for himself, mice with a severed and then fused spinal cord regained motor function and were able to walk after just 28 days. Nevertheless, all the rodents involved in the experiment lived only a little over a month after the operation. With the exception of one mouse, whose ra did not even live a month.
But, Canavero says, keeping animals alive after his experiments is not his goal, as each experiment aims to bring him closer to a successful human head transplantation. Along with serious ethical problems, which re carries such an operation, many expert argues that Canavero’s technique will not work and there is not enough evidence of on the fact that the operation will be successful.
But Canavero does not give up. This December, he wants to perform head transplants in human. Last year, he volunteered. He is a Russian computer scientist suffering from incurable spinal muscular atrophy – Valery Spiridonov, for whom the rego treatment may be the only chance for survival. Of course, if successful. It was Spiridonov who was supposed to be operated on at the end of the year, but Canavero announced in April that the first head transplant would be performed on a Chinese citizen.
Hypothetically, head transplants in they can help c to millions of wasps b, kt to whom the body is refusing to obey or those suffering from fatal diseases. But opponents of this solution note that the problems associated with transplanting human heads go beyond scientific and technical problems and touch on the fundamental nature of the human psyche.
