Everything is now ready for the world's first human head transplant. However, the question is, is the transplant ready to face major problems and overcome it?
The world's first human head transplant is about to happen in the United Kingdom before the year ends, East Texas Matters reported. Unfortunately, there are possible major obstacles that the head transplant would face before it can be successful.
According to Business Insider, heads can't stay alive on their own for there is no such official scientific evidence ever since that a head can make up on its own. Besides, the donor organ needs to be kept alive before it can be connected to the body of the recipient (Spiridonov). There's such a truth that when an organ was removed from the body, it dies easily unless it will be kept in an extremely cool place or saline solution to make the cells stay alive for a particular period of time.
Secondly, there is an issue with the immune system for it has to be coaxed to prepare it on accepting a foreign head that is very risky with the higher possibility of rejection. This issue is what any kinds of transplant faces on how the patient's body would react to the new organ for the antigens of the recipient would possibly won't match leading to the full-scale attack.
Third, the surgery needs to happen in as short as one hour which might not be possible for the operation is so complex. There are lots of things to be done first before the actual transferring of the head, and an hour might not be attainable.
The fourth major obstacle that the world's first human head transplant would face is the fact that spinal cords are incredibly tricky to fuse. To conquer this obstacle, the head, and the spinal cord must be perfectly connected for it to communicate with full control of the new body.
And lastly, before the world's first human head transplant can be certain in the operation, the procedure has to be done and work first in animals in several trials before on humans. All of the problems should be tested and given solution first on animals before such head transplant would be done on humans. Nevertheless, despite the major obstacles seen that the world's first human head transplant would face, Dr. Canavero along with his team is fully decided to perform the operation in December.
