Here’s something that will make your head spin: A Chinese doctor has been surgically transplanting the heads of mice—and he eventually wants to perform head transplants on humans, too.
Surgeon Xiaoping Ren has performed roughly 1,000 head transplants on mice since 2013, and has had more success than anyone else with the surgery, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The mice—whose new heads sometimes have different colored fur than their bodies—have lived as long as a day after the operations.
Next, Ren plans to try his technique on monkeys, “hoping to create the first head-transplanted primate that can live and breathe on its own, at least for a little while,” the Journal says.
Of course, even if head transplants are eventually possible in humans, the procedure is so ethically controversial that many scientists doubt it will ever be allowed in the U.S., even on an experimental level (part of the reason Ren left his job at the University of Cincinnati for China to conduct his research). Researchers who have tried have been nicknamed “Dr. Frankenstein.”
We still can't repair paralysis if someone breaks their back. Yet you expect me to believe that you can cut off an entire head, including the spinal chord, and then reattach it to a new body and have it function?
We still can't repair paralysis if someone breaks their back. Yet you expect me to believe that you can cut off an entire head, including the spinal chord, and then reattach it to a new body and have it function?
That's basically the only major hurdle, though. If they can achieve a viable connection between the two portions of spinal cord, they can perfect the rest of the surgery and it could work.
