Roundup: Head transplant plan sparks skepticism in Italy

The news story of controversial Italian physician Sergio Canavero who said will attempt to transplant a human head to a new body at the end of 2017 has failed to convince Italian media and has sparked skepticism among local citizens and experts.

Canavero in an exclusive interview with Indian newspaper The Economic Times published earlier this month, talks about the surgery, and the emotional storm it has kicked up.

"The technology exists to do this in humans. All we need is ethical approval and the funding to do it," he says.

The physician, who in the interview appears as the director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, is convinced of honing a spinal cord fusion technique to help people with crippling diseases and predicts a future when one could "choose healthy new bodies and extend one's life indefinitely."

According to the report, the first patient could be a 31-year-old wheelchair-bound Russian computer scientist, Valery Spiridinov, debilitated by a muscle wasting condition.

Yet Italian media seem not to believe in the plan, and in recent times have either ignored Canavero or quoted negative reactions from the local scientific world.

Xinhua has learnt that Canavero is not a member of SINch, the Italian Society of Neurosurgery which gathers experts to share views and knowledge, and was fired for unexcused absence by the Molinette San Giovanni Battista hospital in Turin where he used to work.

Local citizens have also appeared skeptical.

Veronica Fresta, owner and editor of the Castel Negrino publishing house, was among those commenting on a Facebook page dedicated to debate around the issue.

"Canavero before making his plan should have been aware of the fact that there were similar attempts in the past, none of which succeeded," she wrote.

"I am in favor of research, also using animals when necessary, but it must be carried out on a solid basis, while as far as I know there is no scientific evidence so far that the spinal cord can be reconnected," she added.

The world's first attempted head transplant dates back to 1970, when U.S. neurosurgeon Robert J. White transplanted the head of one monkey to the body of another. The monkey died after several days. Since then, similar attempts have all proved unsuccessful, the president of SINch Alberto Delitala said.

"This issue poses many questions, but the one that is my place to comment on is the scientific question, and I think that Canavero's plan is an escapist flight of fancy which unfortunately today is not possible," Delitala, who is chief of neurosurgery at the department of head and neck of San Camillo Hospital in Rome, said.

"I believe that bone marrow regeneration will be developed through biotechnology techniques and not through any super sharp nano-blade as Canavaro calls it," he added.

Apart from the clinical side, the issue also has ethical and legal implications, other experts highlighted.

Lorenzo d'Avack, a legal expert and president of Italy's National Bioethics Committee (NBC), said the committee has not debated Canavero's plan so far, although he finds the issue challenging.

"But we first need to know the technical and clinical data of such a complex surgery. I see a head transplant as something extremely risky from many angles, so that so far we have considered this proposal to be far away from possible application," he told Xinhua.

Established by the Italian government in 1990, the NBC formulates opinions and motions to address the ethical and legal problems that may arise as a result of the progress in scientific research and technological applications on life.

"The head is the main part of a human being. Should a head transplant even be clinically possible, where would the limit be set? At an experimental stage, we would risk to produce faulty or monstrous human beings," d'Avack went on saying.

In fact science and research, he observed, are not totally free but they self-regulate through national legislations and various ethical committees both at the national and international level.

"Our committee is focused on human dignity to avoid that science becomes a peril for human fundamental rights. We know that some experiments that look attractive and interesting for the evolution of humankind could create strong inequalities. Therefore we must set ethical limits for science on a case-by-case basis, such as what happened for cloning years ago," he pointed out.

Benedetto Ippolito, a philosopher and professor of history of philosophy at Roma Tre University in Rome, agreed that as far as he knows there is no scientific documentation regarding Cavanero's proposal that can be examined.

"However, what we know for sure is that the head of a human being is much more complex than that of a monkey, and even imagining that a human patient would survive, we have to consider whether the neurological functions would be exactly the same after the transplant," he said.

"Should it be proved that a head transplant is clinically possible and also does not cause any alteration of memory or personality, it cannot be excluded that it can be ethically compatible in the future," Ippolito added.

"But we are not the owners of human life, we cannot risk to alter human nature without knowing what the consequences would be," he said. Endit