May 23, 2017 • 43 mins
"Head transplant" is a bit of a misnomer, because it's more like a body transplant. But either way, the idea is that one human will wake up from surgery with a decidedly different look. Is it possible? Probably not. But there are a couple of surgeons who are making a lot of news in their bid to find out. Learn all about this grisly potential procedure in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. There's stuff you
should know, and it's stuff you should know about something
(00:22):
that has nothing to do with the sun. Are you relieved? Yes?
Are you uh suffering post traumatic podcast disorder a little bit? Yeah?
But but overall I'm feeling good about this. Okay, about
this one coming up? Yeah, fin as strong? Yeah? What
did Jerry say, always do the suck on in first? Yeah? Well,
(00:46):
so far, so good. Yep. It just remains to be
seen whether this one's great. But I don't see how
it could be worse than the Aurora one. Well, this
one about human head transplants. UM. After I picked it,
I thought, gee, should we even be covering this, because well,
if you read opinion pieces about this potential head transplant surgery,
(01:11):
which we'll get to, a lot of people are saying like,
this is this is bad, this is junk science, this
is dangerous medicine, and you shouldn't even be talking about
this stuff, right. But then I read an article in
The Atlantic, um, and it's The Atlantic, and I was like,
you know what, if they're covering this, uh, then we
(01:33):
should cover it too. And people probably said the same
thing about kidney transplants and heart transplants and skin graphs.
You know, oh yeah, for sure. But I think the
big difference with this is and I think this is
what the medical and bioethical community has a problem with.
There's this one maverick possibly lunatic scientist surgeon who was
(01:56):
plowing ahead with this, Sir dree with the rest of
the medical field worldwide basically saying stop, stop, like you
can't do this. This is We're not there yet, and
he's saying, nope, we're there. I've even got somebody who's
willing to do this. We're gonna give it a shot. Well, yes, yes,
(02:19):
and no. He's a lot of that is in this
Atlantic article really kind of spells everything out. A lot
of that is, um bravado out of this dude. And
there is probably no way that he's going to do
this in December of this year, like he said he is. Yeah,
he's said that he is going to go ahead with
(02:42):
the surgery, at least officially, is what he's saying. In
December of two thousand and seventeen. That's not gonna happen. Specifically,
he's going to do it with a Russian computer engineer
named Valerie Spirit and off, and um, that may not
happen with him. He see he has a spirit enough,
has something called word nig Hoffman disease, which is a
(03:04):
spinal spinal muscular dystrophy. And um, has he backed out
now because he seemed pretty gung ho and everything I saw. No,
he's gung ho, but he is on record of saying like,
I don't want to be a part of an expensive
euthanasia uh whatever procedure. Yeah, well that makes sense. I mean,
(03:28):
the whole reason he wants to do this is to
to get better, to improve his lot. He's wheelchair bound
and his his muscles are withering away. Uh, and he's
thirty and he he wants to be mobile again. But yeah,
I would imagine, Yeah, he doesn't want to do this
just to die, right, So he's kind of um and
(03:50):
what we're talking about, I guess we should just go ahead.
And if people are severely confused, it's called the human
head transplant, but what it really is is a human
body trans plant. Because what you're doing is is you're
taking a person in this case, this Russian gentleman who
has a fully functioning brain and from the neck up
(04:13):
is fine, but his body is wasting away. And one
they get to the point where they can do the surgery,
they're going to get a body from a recently very
recently deceased person or or soon to be deceased person. Yeah.
They would just need to be brain dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Um and move the heads, which would in turn give
(04:37):
what's his name Valerie a new body. Yes, which is
is radical of a thing as you could ever imagine.
There is no more radical medical procedure as we currently
stand right now, No, no chance, not even close. And
it's not like they're even swapping the heads. The donor's
head just gets thrown away well in a bucket, Yeah,
(05:02):
I guess for for a little chuck to find. Yeah,
I didn't think about that, but um they're yeah, you
don't put it back on. No, there's no point in it.
So this this head transplant, our body transplant, depending on
your perspective the whole idea. Obviously, it's kind of an
old idea, like it goes back to Frankenstein, and you
(05:24):
can make a case that Frankenstein is based on even
earlier stuff like creating a gollum from clay, that kind
of stuff. Um, But the idea is not new, but
the idea that it could actually be done is fairly new. Um.
The this surgeon who's planning on carrying it out, Dr
(05:46):
Sergio uh kind of arrow. He published an article in
two thousand thirteen and said here's how I plan to
do this, and we'll get to that in a minute.
But in the article that he wrote, the journal article
he wrote laying out how the surgery could be done.
One of the first things he does a site um
(06:07):
similar surgeries that were carried out on animals. Yeah, which
we've covered these before and um, past episodes I think
on like I think one of them was a top
ten list like awful medical procedures or something I can't remember.
But this one one case specifically that stands out. There
(06:29):
was a Russian doctor name of Vladimir Demikoff, and he
very famously grafted the head and four legs of one
dog onto another dog. Um, And apparently the both of
the heads could smell and hear and see and swallow
(06:50):
and scream and lived. Um. I think he did this
a few times, and the biggest success was one of
these dogs live for twenty nine days, right, which is actually,
from what I'm seeing, that's a very very long time. Um.
And this is at a time in the what you say, Um,
(07:13):
this is a time when the only successful transplants that
had been carried out in humans were bone blood vessels
and corneas. They've never done a major organ transplantet And
this guy's getting dogs with grafted heads, two heads to
live for twenty nine days. So it was a big deal.
But even still, and I'm sure at the time people
were like, that's pretty tasteless, um when looking back historically,
(07:38):
like why it don't do that? Stop? I wish that
had never happened. What were you doing? And apparently Demikov's
ultimate goal was to just basically get transplants down and
create a bank of organs, an oregan bank, to where
if you need a transplant, you could get any transplant
you needed any time. Um, transplants would just be so
(08:00):
teen And he saw this as a means to to
an end learning techniques, because apparently grafting dogs together would
help you with that, right, which I mean, it makes
makes a case. Yeah, he wasn't a mad scientist. He
was trying to advance medicine. Uh So in nineteen seventy
that was there a notice. There's just been really big
(08:22):
gaps and a lot of this stuff for good reason,
I guess. Um. But in nineteen seventy and right here
in the United States, uh, there was a recus monkey
in Cleveland and one Dr Robert White performed ahead transplant
and the monkey survived neurologically for thirty six hours. But
I believe he never actually connected the spinal cord. No, no,
(08:48):
And that's the big the biggest hurdle right now. Yeah,
it was and still is so so Dr White, I mean, still,
this is pretty significant. He transplanted ahead and from one
monkey to another and managed to um connect the the
major veins and arteries um and resuscitated, managed to resuscitate
(09:11):
the monkey um and it lived for a few days.
But um, apparently it was just an awful thing, even
even at the time. One of the scientists that was
there who's actually become um Dr Cannavero, the surgeon who
wants to do the human head transplant. This this other
guy has become one of his greatest and most outspoken
(09:32):
public critics. Um, he was there at the time when
this this um experiment in nineteen seventy was carried out,
and he said, this is this is a terrible thing
to do, even to a monkey. Said, we tried to
feed it. The first time we fed it, the food
spilled out of its tricky onto the floor. Um, it
was just an awful thing. And this guy is really
(09:54):
beating the drum to like stop Dr Cannavero from from
carrying this out because he was there saying where he
saw that, he saw the monkey experiments. But Canavero is saying,
you can say that all you want, all the food
could have spilled that on the floor, doesn't matter because
it was successful. The monkey was revived for three days.
(10:15):
But everybody agrees there was there. They didn't connect the
spinal column, and that's the big hurdle. That's one of
the biggest unknowns with the actual head transplant. Yeah, and
more recently in the past couple of years, in fact,
I think just last year, there's a surgeon who's actually
partnered up with the Italian doctor named um Gialping wren
(10:41):
Uh and he's a surgeon in Harbin, China who has
successfully done this on mice. Yeah, he's also partnered with
another UM researcher at khon Kook University in Soul, Korea, Korea,
who's also carrying these these some stuff out on mice.
And Canavero's based clee using these studies to say, hey,
(11:03):
this is possible, but apparently the scientific community is saying
this is these are not necessarily good studies. Well and
Wren Dr Wren in China, like before not gather, he
is UM. He's the one that's saying like, let's just
slow our role here, UM and do this if we
ever try to do it, do it when we really
(11:25):
think we can. Like I've done a monkey, I've done
some mice. Um, we're not ready to do it human yet.
So let's just not talk about um. Valerie in December
of and please stop doing TED talks and going on
news programs and just shut up for a little while.
(11:46):
But it doesn't sound like that since Sergio Cannaverro's d
n A. No, he is very brash sort of he's
he they said in this article. He uses he says
bread instead of money, like hey, if I can't raise
the money, I'll go to uh, someone like Zuckerberg and
get the bread to do this. It says here in
(12:07):
the Atlantic article. He says Cannabaro tends to make blowhard
statements that denigrate his critics, like this, I'm into jiu jitsu.
Jiu jitsu. He told me so, I have the martial
arts mind that you need to tackle all the morons
that come with idiotic questions. He's not doing himself any favors. Yeah,
I don't think he sees it like that from what
I'm seeing, Like there's this I saw um where I
(12:29):
get all my news, the Daily Mail. I saw a
Daily Mail article on him and his procedure, and it
has a photo shoot of him wearing scrubs with a
man's head on a platter. Like doctors don't do that.
They don't do photo shoots like that. They are not
trying to court controversy. Like, yes, if you're a surgeon
(12:52):
like you, you have some part of your fiber is
pretty cocky and arrogant, maybe even have a God complex.
I think it's kind of required typically with um, with
that field that profession. Right, this guy is exponentially beyond
anything that's even high end for a normal surgeon as
far as egotism and um and blow hardness goes. Most
(13:17):
of them don't don't boast about jiu jitsu publicly. No. Uh.
In fact, the most scientists and doctors, um, most don't
like him at all. They said, this is one quote. Uh.
He glibly glides past major problems with his human centipede
level medical horror show. His plan is insane, like James
Bond villain, insane and will amount to an elaborate act
(13:41):
of slow torture and murder. So I think he's partially
obviously really like that as a dude. But they don't
have the money it takes. They don't have the bread,
like a hundred million dollars to do this, And I
think he thinks all this media attention is what is
going to get him the bread to carry out this operation.
(14:01):
You're gonna call it bread from now on. Just through
this show, did you see a hundred million dollars? And
most I saw his thirteen million. Oh, I mean, I've
seen it all over the place, that's the thing I've seen.
It takes anywhere from thirty doctors to a hundred doctors
to assist in this, which is one of the other
big problems is getting up to a hundred legit doctors
(14:22):
that will do this, right, you know, this guy's like
walking clickbait. So let's take a break, man, and then
we'll come back and we'll we'll we'll tell all the
grizzly details of his plan. M hm alright, Chuck. So
(15:00):
back in two thousand thirteen, the Sergio Canavera hit the
scene in a journal. Um, oh, what's the journal called
Surgical Neurology International. It's an open source journal. Yeah, he's
no quack. We should point out he's been published a lot,
and he's a legit surgeon, right, Like, he obviously knows
what he's talking about. It's just the gamble that he's
(15:21):
taking is so so obviously stacked against him that you
that I think most people would say you would have
to be insane to actually do it, or so reckless
and indifferent to the fate of your patient that you
shouldn't be practicing medicine in the first place. Yeah, because
almost the doctors that they've talked to said this will
(15:44):
end in this man's death. Yeah, like, like think about this.
They're working on rats. Rats have the best outcome of
any animal so far, and there they have like thirty
to fifty survival rate among rats. But even that just
means that survived no more than one day after having
(16:05):
their head transplanted. They died from the surgery one way
or another. It's just that survival rate means that they
were managed to be revived after the surgery. It doesn't
mean that they went on to live a healthy life
and bounce their grandchildren on their knee. They died within
a day. Yeah, there's no way that it wouldn't kill
a human being. Yeah, I mean, even if the guy survived,
(16:26):
the likelihood of him being like, well I got my
new body now is is like zero. Watch me bench this.
Although he's uh, Cannavero said he has a nine chance
of living a regular life, and Dr Wrenn in China
saying no, he doesn't quit saying that. You know, yeah,
this guy is he's exactly the kind of surgeon for
(16:49):
this age, isn't he He really is actually us nineties
chance to have a normal life. Where'd you get that? Well,
it just sounds good that, yeah, he fits with the times.
So back in two thirteen, in that journal Surgical Neurology International, UM,
Canavero published basically a step by step outline of how
(17:12):
this um, this surgery would go down, and it's it's
not super in depth, it's just it's basically an overview,
but it hits, you know, most of the salient points.
And he's basically gone and taking different surgeries and assemble
them into this one massive surgery that would be a
(17:35):
head transplant from one donor to the next, or one
donor to the recipient. Yeah, and I think even doctors say,
this isn't like, you know, he's not crazy, Like when
you look at it, it's it all kind of makes sense.
They're just saying like it's it's not gonna work, and
it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the big stumbling
(17:55):
block is going to be the spinal cord because basically
everything else he's he's all these other urgeri that is
cobbling together are proven surgeries, like they can be done.
It's that's that connecting the spinal cord um. That's that's
the biggest obstacle during the surgery. All right, should we
go through this thing? But so the first thing you
(18:17):
do is you need two teams, uh, two surgery teams obviously,
because you have two bodies in there in the same
operating theater. Yeah, you there's got to be a very
quick I think they said the heads have to be
or the head has to be reattached in like under
an hour to have any chance, right, but the spinal
columns have to be reattached within less than two minutes.
(18:41):
But you have an hour for the whole procedure from
from the moment the heads are cut off. So the
first step, Chuck, is remember how we had UM. We
did an episode on therapeutic hypothermia. So they're they plan
to use therapeutic hypothermia where they cool the head of
the recipient down to like fifty degrees, which you know
(19:05):
normally it's point six degrees and at that temperature um
metabolism slows tremendously. So since you have fewer processes going
on into the cells, you have less of a need
for oxygen, which is good because you're cutting the head
off of the body and oxygen can be hard to
come by. So by um cooling the head down to
(19:28):
fifty I think fifty four degrees ferret height, which is
I believed ten degrees celsius um, the metabolism slows down
enough that you're buying yourself that hour. Remember there's that
our time limit. That's because you've cooled down the head,
slowing the metabolism, and um, that gives you that hour
to carry out the surgery. So you're cooling the head
(19:50):
on the recipient, and then you're cooling the spinal column
to the same temperature on the donor, right, So uh,
everyone's gotten cooled down to that point. The recipient is
gonna be lying down at first, and then later like
during the surgery and then during recovery and everything. Um,
he's going to be in a seated position. Um, because
(20:12):
I guess, I guess that just makes sense. With gravity,
you'd want to be seated, doesn't that make sense? I
think it makes the surgery easier for the surgeons too well,
but during recovery too, Like they're not gonna lay him
back down. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to
lay down again. Maybe not so. Uh. They make the
incisions at each neck, they expose arteries, the spine, the
(20:36):
jugular veins. UM. Obviously they're gonna clamp everything off. Um.
They color code all the muscles um, which sounds funny,
but it's actually pretty smart. I guess. Um, just like
wires in a in a circuit would be color coded. Uh,
they want everything hooked back up to the right thing,
so there color coding muscles and they leave the spinal
(20:59):
cord for the last thing. Yeah, this is the this
this is the very very tricky part here. This is
where everybody's like, Okay, you're crazy if you try this.
But Dr Cannavero says, if you cut the spines the
spinal columns of each of the um the donor and
the recipient with a sharp enough blade, and you make
(21:23):
a surgical cut, you should be able to promote regeneration
of those nerves that you're cutting, UM when you reattach
them that if if the cut is precise enough, the
damage that's normally associated with a surgical sever or not
a surgical sever, spinal sever from like some sort of
(21:45):
trauma injury, UM, you won't have all the attendant like
scarification and inflammation that you would from that if you're
doing it surgically with surgical precision. That's a big that's
a big thing that he's saying. Yeah, that's one of
the biggest um stumbling blocks to getting these nerves to
reconnect is the second they're cut, they're gonna start to
(22:07):
form scar tissue. Which makes it much harder to reattach.
So in the case of these mice and China, they
use a one thousand dollar scalpel with a diamond blade
so thin that it's transparent and so, Um, this is
too small obviously for this procedure, but they're gonna get
a scalpel like that big enough to you know, to
(22:30):
work on a human. Right. So here's actually will just
say a lot of the things that are that people
object to with this. But but what what kind of
arrows saying? Um, is that with this cut when you
when you take the spines, are we at the head yet?
Have we moved the head? Um? Well, yeah, we've We've
(22:54):
cut the head and there people should rest easy knowing
they're not just picking the head up. Apparently, it's gonna
be transferred on a on a specially built crane with
vel grow straps. And the crane is actually kind of
clever too because it can just hold it aloft above
the donor body, right, So that allows for the surgeons
(23:15):
to connect everything again in comfort without having to get
into any weird positions or whatever. Um, with the floating
head staring at them. Yeah, the floating head hanging over
the seated, headless body. Man, this is the point that
we're right now. So one of the first things they'll do, um, well,
the first thing that they're doing, because remember you have
less than two minutes between when you cut the spinal
(23:38):
column and when you reattach it um. So the first
thing they're gonna do is attach the spinal column in
the recipient's head and the spinal column in the donor's body.
And they're gonna put this stuff in that apparently is
made of magic, and it's called PEG polyethylene glycol glue,
(24:00):
a medical surgical glue that supposedly work some some wonders
on the body. Yeah, it is like magic, and I
don't understand how it works. I'm not going to pretend
on this show. But um in China with these mice, uh,
before they did the transplant, they would literally just take
(24:20):
this blade. They would sever the spinal cord of this
poor little mouse and then they would take it. That's
apparently it looks like watered down scotch and they would, uh,
it's like an amber fluid, and they would take a
drop of it, drop it on that little spinal column,
stitch the mouse up, and then the mouse would walk again. Yeah,
(24:40):
that's that's something that they were reporting from those that
these mice had their spinal columns totally severed and then
reattached glued together with pilot polyethylene glycol. And yeah, within
what like three weeks I think, or a couple of weeks,
the mice were walking again. This one was two days.
It was the do that took three weeks. Yeah, and
(25:01):
it said the mouse did not walk perfectly. Its back
legs lurched at times. But what compared to a control mouse. Uh, yeah,
the control mouse could couldn't walk. It would just pull
the back legs behind itself. So, um, this this polyethylene glycol, right,
Apparently what it does is it it's hydrophilic and it
(25:23):
attracts fats to it, so it'll go in you you
squirt some into like the the incision or the gap
between the two spinal columns, and allegedly what it will
do is attract these damaged cells and basically fuse them together.
They fused together and regenerate basically into cells. That's one
(25:46):
thing it does. And then there's this this pig that's
um kind of enhanced. I guess that these researchers at
RICE University are coming up what they call it Texas
peg um that has graphene nano spirals in it, and
those serve as basically a structure for the cells to
(26:08):
grow along. And the whole point of using PEG here,
aside from the fact that it can help cells repair
and regenerate, is that when Cannavaro cuts the spinal column,
he will have severed these nerves and axons, the white
matter that that transmit electricity through the body from the
(26:28):
brain and vice versa UM and they need to reattach
and if they don't touch one another, UM, they're gonna
grow past one another and the the electrical transmission will
never be able to take place. He's saying if you
use PEG, And then these Texas researchers are saying, if
you use Texas peg, these nano structures will provide a
(26:49):
structure for the um neurons that or the axons to
grow along, and they will reconnect and regrow and the
person should be able to have electrical hasmission through their
nerves again on the spinal column. This is the most
controversial point so far. Yeah, and they're also gonna have
um electrical paddles on hand, because apparently burst of electricity
(27:13):
can help re establish that communication when you've severed the
spinal cord. So do you want to take a break
right now and uh come back and finish up with
this gruesome operation right after this? M alright, So we
(27:48):
have now put the crazy glue Texas style in place.
Everything's reattached, all the color coded UM muscles and nerves
and arteries and veins like they've taken great care. They
finally sewed the head on, and then they're going to Um.
(28:09):
They're not just gonna say good luck with recovery. They're
actually gonna induce a medical coma with this gentleman, whether
it ends up being Um the Russian or somebody else. Um,
because he's got a fatal disease. He may not make
it if this keeps getting delayed. I don't think we
mentioned that he's not just like, I don't want to
(28:29):
live my life like this, Like he shouldn't have lived
this long. I didn't realize he was that. Yeah. I
think only ten percent of people with his condition make
it into adulthood. And doctors are all like, you should
have you know, you're on barrow time as it is.
You should have gotten ahead transparent years ago exactly. So
they're actually gonna induce a medical coma. Um, I don't
(28:52):
know for how long did it? Say? Like three three
weeks is what he was roughly estimating, just to keep everything,
just to get everything growing together as calm as that with,
while preventing movement too. Yeah, like the possibility of movement.
He's just not moving for three weeks, which I mean,
(29:12):
hello bedswords, Am I right? Although I guess that's probably
the least of your warriors when you've just gotten a
head transplant. Yeah, I think so. But that's that they
I believe that's it. So they're they're going to be
inducing a medical coma, and then they'll be passing electrical
charges through the spinal column to try to induce um
(29:33):
axon regrowth and repair this this whole time. And then
after three weeks he'll get up, do a cart wheel
and run right out of the hospital. No, after three weeks, Uh,
maybe he'll open his eyes and move his mouth. Um,
that would be a success to a certain degree. What
they're really gonna be looking for is anything below the
(29:55):
neck moving. Um, if he wiggles his fingers or his toes,
that to breakthrough, like we've never had in medicine before. UM.
But even if that happens, that would be just the
beginning of a very very long road of uh, not
only physiological rehab, but psychological rehab. Yeah, apparently the psychological
(30:20):
impact a lot of people are worried about. When um
Canavera wrote UH the the initial article in two thousand
thirteen in that same journal, a couple of other Italian
surgeons rode into the editors and said, there are a
lot of things wrong with this ethically, even even just
put aside all of the questions surgically ethically, you know,
(30:44):
this guy is not taking these things into account. One
of the things they pointed out was that insanity would
be a likely outcome from head or body transplant, because
we form our our sense of ourselves cognitively in large
part through our body. So if you suddenly have a
different body your you would and you basically wake up
(31:07):
to you overnight with with two a big fat body
identity crisis or identity crisis in general. Yeah, I mean
they've had uh, they've seen this act out in like
hand transplants, and that's really you know, you can't see
your liver or kidney or your heart uh or cornea
like stuff like that. But um, but I'm sure it's
(31:30):
still you still think about the fact that your your
kidney is from somewhere else, but you don't have to
see it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So just that
reminder of a hand, much less an entire body. Uh,
it's going to be emotionally in psychologically challenging to say
the least. Um. There's some other questions that this definitely
(31:51):
raises as well. Um. For example, if you wanted to
change your gender, would this be acceptable and acceptable surgery?
I tend to say yes on that one. I can
change your entire body instead of just parts of your body. Yeah. Yeah,
(32:11):
just just you know that makes sense. It's like all
at once, bam done. What about someone who what if
this works and someone was super rich and just wanted
a different body, like I want to be eight inches
taller and muscular, so let's do this's million dollars. Uh.
(32:34):
I would have an issue with that for for one reason,
and that would be that you have just taken them
the body of a potential organ donor that could have
saved multiple lives of people who needed those organs. You
took them because you wanted to be eight inches taller.
Other than that, if if there was a yeah, well
(32:57):
that's a pretty big one. I don't even I don't
even want to qualify it with saying all than that,
I have no problem with it, because that's such a
huge problem. It disqualifies in my eyes. Uh. Here's the
good news, though, is that, um, he doesn't have to
get a percent of these cells to remain intact. There
are studies out there, like you know, legit studies that say, uh,
(33:19):
your your motor function, your basic motor function can be
preserved if you just get of those cells to remain intact. So, um,
the Atlantic says, if he failed a fuse every four
or five, um, he could fail on every I'm sorry,
four of every five nerve cells and it still might
succeed in there, right, and well, the thing is is
(33:42):
Canavero's whole thing is anytime somebody raises an objection to it,
he's like peg poly ethylene glycol will handle it. And
it does seem to work some pretty amazing miracles. But
the it's not just some cure all magic stuff that
just fixes everything. It remains to be seen and what's
(34:04):
kind of fishy is a lot of the um there's
some of the recent papers on PEG and what an
amazing miracle compound it is are edited by Cannivero himself.
So the guy who's saying, no, it's this miracle substance
you should read about it is the one who's editing
the stuff that he's telling you to go read about.
(34:28):
I don't think we mentioned just like an organ can
be rejected, that it could reject the body outright from
the beginning, which would be a catastrophic failure. Um that
that would kill you if your your body rejects your
or your head. Yeah, well, I'm just glad he's hooked
up with Dr Wren at least, because before that, before
(34:52):
they had made contact, he was he was plowing full
steam ahead, um and still wants to. But he hadn't
even he wasn't trying it on mice and monkeys, you know,
Like he hooked up with someone who was. I was like, oh, well,
you're you're doing the real work. Let's get together on this.
So his um, his idea was that he would have
(35:14):
to practice on cadavers. Yeah, he needed to practice on cadavers.
But apparently that would come after practicing on um animals,
and apparently he according to bioethesis, he would be hard
pressed to get approval even to carry out an experiment
(35:34):
like this on animals these days, the most medical ethics
boards would be like, no, this is unnecessary, this is
not you shouldn't be doing this, so don't do that.
At least in the United States, I should say, well,
he's never gonna do this here. He would almost certainly
have to do this. In China they have a lot
more latitude. I saw there's this hospital in Vietnam that's
(35:55):
like US, US, we'll do it because they probably can
get funding and uh press means yeah, I would imagine.
I know they went to the Russians because this gentleman
is Russian and he thought he could get the government
to chip in and they said no. And so now
he is literally trying to raise money by selling things,
(36:19):
raise bread. He's trying to raise bread by selling like
mugs and key chains and stuff. This is not a
lie with his head on, like these these muscular bodies
and stuff. Wow, So it's uh I did see. I
finally found it said between ten and a hundred million dollars,
which is pretty big. Uh latitude there, Yeah, I mean
(36:42):
there's like there's a it's pretty easy to point at
Canavero and be like, here, what's what's what's your deal man?
But it makes it easy to to look past um
the patient spiritanovs UM situation, you know, like I'm sure
he wants this to work so bad. Sure it's heartbreaking,
(37:04):
you know, yeah, I mean so much so that like
he said, he doesn't want to just be an expensive
euthan asia procedure. But he also said, you know, I'm
headed toward death here soon, Like why not? Yeah? I
saw one other thing. You got anything else there? I
(37:24):
saw that another objection to this by the medical community
would be that it could conceivably raise the yuck factor.
That's what they call it UM among organ donation, just
around among the general public. And this yuck factor. I
checked it out because it was in scare quotes. It's
a real thing, UM and it's basically the general public's
(37:49):
um discussed toward bio like bioaugmentation, weird surgeries, UM, odd transplants.
This this head transplant, body or body transplant or head
transplant falls right into that weird yuck factor, almost like
the Uncanny Valley. And I read this article about it,
(38:10):
and apparently there's something there's a debate going on on
whether humans have an inner wisdom of what is good
or bad or acceptable, and when our yuck factor is activated,
it's actually an inner wisdom that's saying that's not okay,
don't do that. And this this author was arguing that
(38:31):
that's not true, that it's actually what is called folk biology,
that humans are kind of prewired to have an idea
of what's natural and what's normal, and we're just simply
grossed out when we're faced with something that challenges that normalcy.
But it doesn't mean that it's right or wrong. There's
this debate over which one is correct, folk biology or
(38:55):
the inner wisdom. That's interesting. It is pretty interesting. Well,
we at an entire show in two thousand and ten,
I think January or maybe it was June started the
j and it wasn't July. I wrote it down, but
I just threw it away anyway, How organ donation works.
(39:17):
That was a good one. And the therapeutic hypothermia want
to check that out too. Yeah, Well, if you want
to know more about this head transplant operation, you can
type those words in the search part. How stuff works
and it'll bring up a great article. And since I
said that, it's time for listener mayo, I'm going to
(39:37):
call this, um what should I call this one? I'm
gonna call this anniversary of the podcast. Hey guys, my
name is JP and I'm a business administration major at
Christopher Newport University, currently studying at the University of Glasgow.
Uh going into my senior year. Writing on my twenty
(40:00):
first birthday, which is also the fourth anniversary that I
began following the podcast my little brother introduced me to
That's Why I sk and now immediately binged roughly three episodes.
I'm not sure how many people right and saying this,
but I can probably say listen to every single one.
And yes, I know the episode in context of Hippie
Rob's emergence. They haven't talked about him in a long time. No,
(40:21):
he's been long gone. He seems like he would be
like an assistant to the surgeon, you know, hippie. I
don't think that'd be a good idea. No, No, it's
a bad idea. And I don't mean a medical assistant.
I mean like a you know, he did the jiu
jitsu on the Idiot questions. Maybe but it just be
some like clumsy like BrownHouse kick that it's just like
(40:43):
six inches off the ground. The past four years have
been some of the most influential on my life as
a whole. Uh in your podcast has played a huge
part now I'm matured as an adult through Chuck's soft
spoken tone and Josh's optimistic demeanor. How about that? As
well as Jerry's elite producing abilities. The podcast has made
(41:04):
me look forward to Tuesday's something I never thought was possible.
I guess he doesn't listen to Thursdays. Optimistic. Yeah, optimistic
demeanor that's you never never would have called that one.
Aside from how much I enjoy that maybe has us confused.
Maybe because you have a soft spoken tone. Aside from
how much I enjoy the podcast, you really shaped how
(41:26):
I think things through as well as my perspective on
many issues. People often forget that some matters have multiple
sides to them and that a full opinion should be
developed from all the facts. I figured today was the
most fitting to write in given how much the show
means to me, continue to look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Oh there you go, Uh, And I'm anxiously waiting for
the release of your next live tour schedule. Please come
(41:48):
to d c H. I think we are at some
point right. I've even gone as far as debating whether
to get a tattoo excuse me to two of the
iconic stuff you should know microphone, but not sure Mom
would approve of it. Um, John, I'm gonna say, don't
do that. I don't know, John, Maybe you do it,
(42:08):
don't do it. I have high hopes that you'll do
You're optimistic demeanor. Anyways, keeping keep doing what you're doing, guys.
I'll be cheering from the sideline as you continue towards
your goal of world domination. Cheers from Scotland. John Patrick, Vitty,
Oh wow, and that was nice little touch at the end.
Thank you, Uh, and everybody in Glasgow, Chuck, and I
(42:31):
know it's Glasgow, but we like saying Glasgow. It rolls
off the tongue. Did I say, gal m, who is that?
John Patrick? That's right? Thanks a lot, John, We appreciate it. Uh.
I say, go for the tattoo, but probably shouldn't listen
to me, I say, don't. You should probably listen to
Chuck if you want to know more about oh man,
(42:53):
something's wrong with me today, dude. If you want to
get in touch with me and Chuck like John did,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or josh Im Clark. You can hang out with
us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know
or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
an email. That stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us sort of home on
(43:14):
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. There's stuff you
should know, and it's stuff you should know about something
(00:22):
that has nothing to do with the sun. Are you relieved? Yes?
Are you uh suffering post traumatic podcast disorder a little bit? Yeah?
But but overall I'm feeling good about this. Okay, about
this one coming up? Yeah, fin as strong? Yeah? What
did Jerry say, always do the suck on in first? Yeah? Well,
(00:46):
so far, so good. Yep. It just remains to be
seen whether this one's great. But I don't see how
it could be worse than the Aurora one. Well, this
one about human head transplants. UM. After I picked it,
I thought, gee, should we even be covering this, because well,
if you read opinion pieces about this potential head transplant surgery,
(01:11):
which we'll get to, a lot of people are saying like,
this is this is bad, this is junk science, this
is dangerous medicine, and you shouldn't even be talking about
this stuff, right. But then I read an article in
The Atlantic, um, and it's The Atlantic, and I was like,
you know what, if they're covering this, uh, then we
(01:33):
should cover it too. And people probably said the same
thing about kidney transplants and heart transplants and skin graphs.
You know, oh yeah, for sure. But I think the
big difference with this is and I think this is
what the medical and bioethical community has a problem with.
There's this one maverick possibly lunatic scientist surgeon who was
(01:56):
plowing ahead with this, Sir dree with the rest of
the medical field worldwide basically saying stop, stop, like you
can't do this. This is We're not there yet, and
he's saying, nope, we're there. I've even got somebody who's
willing to do this. We're gonna give it a shot. Well, yes, yes,
(02:19):
and no. He's a lot of that is in this
Atlantic article really kind of spells everything out. A lot
of that is, um bravado out of this dude. And
there is probably no way that he's going to do
this in December of this year, like he said he is. Yeah,
he's said that he is going to go ahead with
(02:42):
the surgery, at least officially, is what he's saying. In
December of two thousand and seventeen. That's not gonna happen. Specifically,
he's going to do it with a Russian computer engineer
named Valerie Spirit and off, and um, that may not
happen with him. He see he has a spirit enough,
has something called word nig Hoffman disease, which is a
(03:04):
spinal spinal muscular dystrophy. And um, has he backed out
now because he seemed pretty gung ho and everything I saw. No,
he's gung ho, but he is on record of saying like,
I don't want to be a part of an expensive
euthanasia uh whatever procedure. Yeah, well that makes sense. I mean,
(03:28):
the whole reason he wants to do this is to
to get better, to improve his lot. He's wheelchair bound
and his his muscles are withering away. Uh, and he's
thirty and he he wants to be mobile again. But yeah,
I would imagine, Yeah, he doesn't want to do this
just to die, right, So he's kind of um and
(03:50):
what we're talking about, I guess we should just go ahead.
And if people are severely confused, it's called the human
head transplant, but what it really is is a human
body trans plant. Because what you're doing is is you're
taking a person in this case, this Russian gentleman who
has a fully functioning brain and from the neck up
(04:13):
is fine, but his body is wasting away. And one
they get to the point where they can do the surgery,
they're going to get a body from a recently very
recently deceased person or or soon to be deceased person. Yeah.
They would just need to be brain dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Um and move the heads, which would in turn give
(04:37):
what's his name Valerie a new body. Yes, which is
is radical of a thing as you could ever imagine.
There is no more radical medical procedure as we currently
stand right now, No, no chance, not even close. And
it's not like they're even swapping the heads. The donor's
head just gets thrown away well in a bucket, Yeah,
(05:02):
I guess for for a little chuck to find. Yeah,
I didn't think about that, but um they're yeah, you
don't put it back on. No, there's no point in it.
So this this head transplant, our body transplant, depending on
your perspective the whole idea. Obviously, it's kind of an
old idea, like it goes back to Frankenstein, and you
(05:24):
can make a case that Frankenstein is based on even
earlier stuff like creating a gollum from clay, that kind
of stuff. Um, But the idea is not new, but
the idea that it could actually be done is fairly new. Um.
The this surgeon who's planning on carrying it out, Dr
(05:46):
Sergio uh kind of arrow. He published an article in
two thousand thirteen and said here's how I plan to
do this, and we'll get to that in a minute.
But in the article that he wrote, the journal article
he wrote laying out how the surgery could be done.
One of the first things he does a site um
(06:07):
similar surgeries that were carried out on animals. Yeah, which
we've covered these before and um, past episodes I think
on like I think one of them was a top
ten list like awful medical procedures or something I can't remember.
But this one one case specifically that stands out. There
(06:29):
was a Russian doctor name of Vladimir Demikoff, and he
very famously grafted the head and four legs of one
dog onto another dog. Um, And apparently the both of
the heads could smell and hear and see and swallow
(06:50):
and scream and lived. Um. I think he did this
a few times, and the biggest success was one of
these dogs live for twenty nine days, right, which is actually,
from what I'm seeing, that's a very very long time. Um.
And this is at a time in the what you say, Um,
(07:13):
this is a time when the only successful transplants that
had been carried out in humans were bone blood vessels
and corneas. They've never done a major organ transplantet And
this guy's getting dogs with grafted heads, two heads to
live for twenty nine days. So it was a big deal.
But even still, and I'm sure at the time people
were like, that's pretty tasteless, um when looking back historically,
(07:38):
like why it don't do that? Stop? I wish that
had never happened. What were you doing? And apparently Demikov's
ultimate goal was to just basically get transplants down and
create a bank of organs, an oregan bank, to where
if you need a transplant, you could get any transplant
you needed any time. Um, transplants would just be so
(08:00):
teen And he saw this as a means to to
an end learning techniques, because apparently grafting dogs together would
help you with that, right, which I mean, it makes
makes a case. Yeah, he wasn't a mad scientist. He
was trying to advance medicine. Uh So in nineteen seventy
that was there a notice. There's just been really big
(08:22):
gaps and a lot of this stuff for good reason,
I guess. Um. But in nineteen seventy and right here
in the United States, uh, there was a recus monkey
in Cleveland and one Dr Robert White performed ahead transplant
and the monkey survived neurologically for thirty six hours. But
I believe he never actually connected the spinal cord. No, no,
(08:48):
And that's the big the biggest hurdle right now. Yeah,
it was and still is so so Dr White, I mean, still,
this is pretty significant. He transplanted ahead and from one
monkey to another and managed to um connect the the
major veins and arteries um and resuscitated, managed to resuscitate
(09:11):
the monkey um and it lived for a few days.
But um, apparently it was just an awful thing, even
even at the time. One of the scientists that was
there who's actually become um Dr Cannavero, the surgeon who
wants to do the human head transplant. This this other
guy has become one of his greatest and most outspoken
(09:32):
public critics. Um, he was there at the time when
this this um experiment in nineteen seventy was carried out,
and he said, this is this is a terrible thing
to do, even to a monkey. Said, we tried to
feed it. The first time we fed it, the food
spilled out of its tricky onto the floor. Um, it
was just an awful thing. And this guy is really
(09:54):
beating the drum to like stop Dr Cannavero from from
carrying this out because he was there saying where he
saw that, he saw the monkey experiments. But Canavero is saying,
you can say that all you want, all the food
could have spilled that on the floor, doesn't matter because
it was successful. The monkey was revived for three days.
(10:15):
But everybody agrees there was there. They didn't connect the
spinal column, and that's the big hurdle. That's one of
the biggest unknowns with the actual head transplant. Yeah, and
more recently in the past couple of years, in fact,
I think just last year, there's a surgeon who's actually
partnered up with the Italian doctor named um Gialping wren
(10:41):
Uh and he's a surgeon in Harbin, China who has
successfully done this on mice. Yeah, he's also partnered with
another UM researcher at khon Kook University in Soul, Korea, Korea,
who's also carrying these these some stuff out on mice.
And Canavero's based clee using these studies to say, hey,
(11:03):
this is possible, but apparently the scientific community is saying
this is these are not necessarily good studies. Well and
Wren Dr Wren in China, like before not gather, he
is UM. He's the one that's saying like, let's just
slow our role here, UM and do this if we
ever try to do it, do it when we really
(11:25):
think we can. Like I've done a monkey, I've done
some mice. Um, we're not ready to do it human yet.
So let's just not talk about um. Valerie in December
of and please stop doing TED talks and going on
news programs and just shut up for a little while.
(11:46):
But it doesn't sound like that since Sergio Cannaverro's d
n A. No, he is very brash sort of he's
he they said in this article. He uses he says
bread instead of money, like hey, if I can't raise
the money, I'll go to uh, someone like Zuckerberg and
get the bread to do this. It says here in
(12:07):
the Atlantic article. He says Cannabaro tends to make blowhard
statements that denigrate his critics, like this, I'm into jiu jitsu.
Jiu jitsu. He told me so, I have the martial
arts mind that you need to tackle all the morons
that come with idiotic questions. He's not doing himself any favors. Yeah,
I don't think he sees it like that from what
I'm seeing, Like there's this I saw um where I
(12:29):
get all my news, the Daily Mail. I saw a
Daily Mail article on him and his procedure, and it
has a photo shoot of him wearing scrubs with a
man's head on a platter. Like doctors don't do that.
They don't do photo shoots like that. They are not
trying to court controversy. Like, yes, if you're a surgeon
(12:52):
like you, you have some part of your fiber is
pretty cocky and arrogant, maybe even have a God complex.
I think it's kind of required typically with um, with
that field that profession. Right, this guy is exponentially beyond
anything that's even high end for a normal surgeon as
far as egotism and um and blow hardness goes. Most
(13:17):
of them don't don't boast about jiu jitsu publicly. No. Uh.
In fact, the most scientists and doctors, um, most don't
like him at all. They said, this is one quote. Uh.
He glibly glides past major problems with his human centipede
level medical horror show. His plan is insane, like James
Bond villain, insane and will amount to an elaborate act
(13:41):
of slow torture and murder. So I think he's partially
obviously really like that as a dude. But they don't
have the money it takes. They don't have the bread,
like a hundred million dollars to do this, And I
think he thinks all this media attention is what is
going to get him the bread to carry out this operation.
(14:01):
You're gonna call it bread from now on. Just through
this show, did you see a hundred million dollars? And
most I saw his thirteen million. Oh, I mean, I've
seen it all over the place, that's the thing I've seen.
It takes anywhere from thirty doctors to a hundred doctors
to assist in this, which is one of the other
big problems is getting up to a hundred legit doctors
(14:22):
that will do this, right, you know, this guy's like
walking clickbait. So let's take a break, man, and then
we'll come back and we'll we'll we'll tell all the
grizzly details of his plan. M hm alright, Chuck. So
(15:00):
back in two thousand thirteen, the Sergio Canavera hit the
scene in a journal. Um, oh, what's the journal called
Surgical Neurology International. It's an open source journal. Yeah, he's
no quack. We should point out he's been published a lot,
and he's a legit surgeon, right, Like, he obviously knows
what he's talking about. It's just the gamble that he's
(15:21):
taking is so so obviously stacked against him that you
that I think most people would say you would have
to be insane to actually do it, or so reckless
and indifferent to the fate of your patient that you
shouldn't be practicing medicine in the first place. Yeah, because
almost the doctors that they've talked to said this will
(15:44):
end in this man's death. Yeah, like, like think about this.
They're working on rats. Rats have the best outcome of
any animal so far, and there they have like thirty
to fifty survival rate among rats. But even that just
means that survived no more than one day after having
(16:05):
their head transplanted. They died from the surgery one way
or another. It's just that survival rate means that they
were managed to be revived after the surgery. It doesn't
mean that they went on to live a healthy life
and bounce their grandchildren on their knee. They died within
a day. Yeah, there's no way that it wouldn't kill
a human being. Yeah, I mean, even if the guy survived,
(16:26):
the likelihood of him being like, well I got my
new body now is is like zero. Watch me bench this.
Although he's uh, Cannavero said he has a nine chance
of living a regular life, and Dr Wrenn in China
saying no, he doesn't quit saying that. You know, yeah,
this guy is he's exactly the kind of surgeon for
(16:49):
this age, isn't he He really is actually us nineties
chance to have a normal life. Where'd you get that? Well,
it just sounds good that, yeah, he fits with the times.
So back in two thirteen, in that journal Surgical Neurology International, UM,
Canavero published basically a step by step outline of how
(17:12):
this um, this surgery would go down, and it's it's
not super in depth, it's just it's basically an overview,
but it hits, you know, most of the salient points.
And he's basically gone and taking different surgeries and assemble
them into this one massive surgery that would be a
(17:35):
head transplant from one donor to the next, or one
donor to the recipient. Yeah, and I think even doctors say,
this isn't like, you know, he's not crazy, Like when
you look at it, it's it all kind of makes sense.
They're just saying like it's it's not gonna work, and
it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, totally. And the big stumbling
(17:55):
block is going to be the spinal cord because basically
everything else he's he's all these other urgeri that is
cobbling together are proven surgeries, like they can be done.
It's that's that connecting the spinal cord um. That's that's
the biggest obstacle during the surgery. All right, should we
go through this thing? But so the first thing you
(18:17):
do is you need two teams, uh, two surgery teams obviously,
because you have two bodies in there in the same
operating theater. Yeah, you there's got to be a very
quick I think they said the heads have to be
or the head has to be reattached in like under
an hour to have any chance, right, but the spinal
columns have to be reattached within less than two minutes.
(18:41):
But you have an hour for the whole procedure from
from the moment the heads are cut off. So the
first step, Chuck, is remember how we had UM. We
did an episode on therapeutic hypothermia. So they're they plan
to use therapeutic hypothermia where they cool the head of
the recipient down to like fifty degrees, which you know
(19:05):
normally it's point six degrees and at that temperature um
metabolism slows tremendously. So since you have fewer processes going
on into the cells, you have less of a need
for oxygen, which is good because you're cutting the head
off of the body and oxygen can be hard to
come by. So by um cooling the head down to
(19:28):
fifty I think fifty four degrees ferret height, which is
I believed ten degrees celsius um, the metabolism slows down
enough that you're buying yourself that hour. Remember there's that
our time limit. That's because you've cooled down the head,
slowing the metabolism, and um, that gives you that hour
to carry out the surgery. So you're cooling the head
(19:50):
on the recipient, and then you're cooling the spinal column
to the same temperature on the donor, right, So uh,
everyone's gotten cooled down to that point. The recipient is
gonna be lying down at first, and then later like
during the surgery and then during recovery and everything. Um,
he's going to be in a seated position. Um, because
(20:12):
I guess, I guess that just makes sense. With gravity,
you'd want to be seated, doesn't that make sense? I
think it makes the surgery easier for the surgeons too well,
but during recovery too, Like they're not gonna lay him
back down. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to
lay down again. Maybe not so. Uh. They make the
incisions at each neck, they expose arteries, the spine, the
(20:36):
jugular veins. UM. Obviously they're gonna clamp everything off. Um.
They color code all the muscles um, which sounds funny,
but it's actually pretty smart. I guess. Um, just like
wires in a in a circuit would be color coded. Uh,
they want everything hooked back up to the right thing,
so there color coding muscles and they leave the spinal
(20:59):
cord for the last thing. Yeah, this is the this
this is the very very tricky part here. This is
where everybody's like, Okay, you're crazy if you try this.
But Dr Cannavero says, if you cut the spines the
spinal columns of each of the um the donor and
the recipient with a sharp enough blade, and you make
(21:23):
a surgical cut, you should be able to promote regeneration
of those nerves that you're cutting, UM when you reattach
them that if if the cut is precise enough, the
damage that's normally associated with a surgical sever or not
a surgical sever, spinal sever from like some sort of
(21:45):
trauma injury, UM, you won't have all the attendant like
scarification and inflammation that you would from that if you're
doing it surgically with surgical precision. That's a big that's
a big thing that he's saying. Yeah, that's one of
the biggest um stumbling blocks to getting these nerves to
reconnect is the second they're cut, they're gonna start to
(22:07):
form scar tissue. Which makes it much harder to reattach.
So in the case of these mice and China, they
use a one thousand dollar scalpel with a diamond blade
so thin that it's transparent and so, Um, this is
too small obviously for this procedure, but they're gonna get
a scalpel like that big enough to you know, to
(22:30):
work on a human. Right. So here's actually will just
say a lot of the things that are that people
object to with this. But but what what kind of
arrows saying? Um, is that with this cut when you
when you take the spines, are we at the head yet?
Have we moved the head? Um? Well, yeah, we've We've
(22:54):
cut the head and there people should rest easy knowing
they're not just picking the head up. Apparently, it's gonna
be transferred on a on a specially built crane with
vel grow straps. And the crane is actually kind of
clever too because it can just hold it aloft above
the donor body, right, So that allows for the surgeons
(23:15):
to connect everything again in comfort without having to get
into any weird positions or whatever. Um, with the floating
head staring at them. Yeah, the floating head hanging over
the seated, headless body. Man, this is the point that
we're right now. So one of the first things they'll do, um, well,
the first thing that they're doing, because remember you have
less than two minutes between when you cut the spinal
(23:38):
column and when you reattach it um. So the first
thing they're gonna do is attach the spinal column in
the recipient's head and the spinal column in the donor's body.
And they're gonna put this stuff in that apparently is
made of magic, and it's called PEG polyethylene glycol glue,
(24:00):
a medical surgical glue that supposedly work some some wonders
on the body. Yeah, it is like magic, and I
don't understand how it works. I'm not going to pretend
on this show. But um in China with these mice, uh,
before they did the transplant, they would literally just take
(24:20):
this blade. They would sever the spinal cord of this
poor little mouse and then they would take it. That's
apparently it looks like watered down scotch and they would, uh,
it's like an amber fluid, and they would take a
drop of it, drop it on that little spinal column,
stitch the mouse up, and then the mouse would walk again. Yeah,
(24:40):
that's that's something that they were reporting from those that
these mice had their spinal columns totally severed and then
reattached glued together with pilot polyethylene glycol. And yeah, within
what like three weeks I think, or a couple of weeks,
the mice were walking again. This one was two days.
It was the do that took three weeks. Yeah, and
(25:01):
it said the mouse did not walk perfectly. Its back
legs lurched at times. But what compared to a control mouse. Uh, yeah,
the control mouse could couldn't walk. It would just pull
the back legs behind itself. So, um, this this polyethylene glycol, right,
Apparently what it does is it it's hydrophilic and it
(25:23):
attracts fats to it, so it'll go in you you
squirt some into like the the incision or the gap
between the two spinal columns, and allegedly what it will
do is attract these damaged cells and basically fuse them together.
They fused together and regenerate basically into cells. That's one
(25:46):
thing it does. And then there's this this pig that's
um kind of enhanced. I guess that these researchers at
RICE University are coming up what they call it Texas
peg um that has graphene nano spirals in it, and
those serve as basically a structure for the cells to
(26:08):
grow along. And the whole point of using PEG here,
aside from the fact that it can help cells repair
and regenerate, is that when Cannavaro cuts the spinal column,
he will have severed these nerves and axons, the white
matter that that transmit electricity through the body from the
(26:28):
brain and vice versa UM and they need to reattach
and if they don't touch one another, UM, they're gonna
grow past one another and the the electrical transmission will
never be able to take place. He's saying if you
use PEG, And then these Texas researchers are saying, if
you use Texas peg, these nano structures will provide a
(26:49):
structure for the um neurons that or the axons to
grow along, and they will reconnect and regrow and the
person should be able to have electrical hasmission through their
nerves again on the spinal column. This is the most
controversial point so far. Yeah, and they're also gonna have
um electrical paddles on hand, because apparently burst of electricity
(27:13):
can help re establish that communication when you've severed the
spinal cord. So do you want to take a break
right now and uh come back and finish up with
this gruesome operation right after this? M alright, So we
(27:48):
have now put the crazy glue Texas style in place.
Everything's reattached, all the color coded UM muscles and nerves
and arteries and veins like they've taken great care. They
finally sewed the head on, and then they're going to Um.
(28:09):
They're not just gonna say good luck with recovery. They're
actually gonna induce a medical coma with this gentleman, whether
it ends up being Um the Russian or somebody else. Um,
because he's got a fatal disease. He may not make
it if this keeps getting delayed. I don't think we
mentioned that he's not just like, I don't want to
(28:29):
live my life like this, Like he shouldn't have lived
this long. I didn't realize he was that. Yeah. I
think only ten percent of people with his condition make
it into adulthood. And doctors are all like, you should
have you know, you're on barrow time as it is.
You should have gotten ahead transparent years ago exactly. So
they're actually gonna induce a medical coma. Um, I don't
(28:52):
know for how long did it? Say? Like three three
weeks is what he was roughly estimating, just to keep everything,
just to get everything growing together as calm as that with,
while preventing movement too. Yeah, like the possibility of movement.
He's just not moving for three weeks, which I mean,
(29:12):
hello bedswords, Am I right? Although I guess that's probably
the least of your warriors when you've just gotten a
head transplant. Yeah, I think so. But that's that they
I believe that's it. So they're they're going to be
inducing a medical coma, and then they'll be passing electrical
charges through the spinal column to try to induce um
(29:33):
axon regrowth and repair this this whole time. And then
after three weeks he'll get up, do a cart wheel
and run right out of the hospital. No, after three weeks, Uh,
maybe he'll open his eyes and move his mouth. Um,
that would be a success to a certain degree. What
they're really gonna be looking for is anything below the
(29:55):
neck moving. Um, if he wiggles his fingers or his toes,
that to breakthrough, like we've never had in medicine before. UM.
But even if that happens, that would be just the
beginning of a very very long road of uh, not
only physiological rehab, but psychological rehab. Yeah, apparently the psychological
(30:20):
impact a lot of people are worried about. When um
Canavera wrote UH the the initial article in two thousand
thirteen in that same journal, a couple of other Italian
surgeons rode into the editors and said, there are a
lot of things wrong with this ethically, even even just
put aside all of the questions surgically ethically, you know,
(30:44):
this guy is not taking these things into account. One
of the things they pointed out was that insanity would
be a likely outcome from head or body transplant, because
we form our our sense of ourselves cognitively in large
part through our body. So if you suddenly have a
different body your you would and you basically wake up
(31:07):
to you overnight with with two a big fat body
identity crisis or identity crisis in general. Yeah, I mean
they've had uh, they've seen this act out in like
hand transplants, and that's really you know, you can't see
your liver or kidney or your heart uh or cornea
like stuff like that. But um, but I'm sure it's
(31:30):
still you still think about the fact that your your
kidney is from somewhere else, but you don't have to
see it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So just that
reminder of a hand, much less an entire body. Uh,
it's going to be emotionally in psychologically challenging to say
the least. Um. There's some other questions that this definitely
(31:51):
raises as well. Um. For example, if you wanted to
change your gender, would this be acceptable and acceptable surgery?
I tend to say yes on that one. I can
change your entire body instead of just parts of your body. Yeah. Yeah,
(32:11):
just just you know that makes sense. It's like all
at once, bam done. What about someone who what if
this works and someone was super rich and just wanted
a different body, like I want to be eight inches
taller and muscular, so let's do this's million dollars. Uh.
(32:34):
I would have an issue with that for for one reason,
and that would be that you have just taken them
the body of a potential organ donor that could have
saved multiple lives of people who needed those organs. You
took them because you wanted to be eight inches taller.
Other than that, if if there was a yeah, well
(32:57):
that's a pretty big one. I don't even I don't
even want to qualify it with saying all than that,
I have no problem with it, because that's such a
huge problem. It disqualifies in my eyes. Uh. Here's the
good news, though, is that, um, he doesn't have to
get a percent of these cells to remain intact. There
are studies out there, like you know, legit studies that say, uh,
(33:19):
your your motor function, your basic motor function can be
preserved if you just get of those cells to remain intact. So, um,
the Atlantic says, if he failed a fuse every four
or five, um, he could fail on every I'm sorry,
four of every five nerve cells and it still might
succeed in there, right, and well, the thing is is
(33:42):
Canavero's whole thing is anytime somebody raises an objection to it,
he's like peg poly ethylene glycol will handle it. And
it does seem to work some pretty amazing miracles. But
the it's not just some cure all magic stuff that
just fixes everything. It remains to be seen and what's
(34:04):
kind of fishy is a lot of the um there's
some of the recent papers on PEG and what an
amazing miracle compound it is are edited by Cannivero himself.
So the guy who's saying, no, it's this miracle substance
you should read about it is the one who's editing
the stuff that he's telling you to go read about.
(34:28):
I don't think we mentioned just like an organ can
be rejected, that it could reject the body outright from
the beginning, which would be a catastrophic failure. Um that
that would kill you if your your body rejects your
or your head. Yeah, well, I'm just glad he's hooked
up with Dr Wren at least, because before that, before
(34:52):
they had made contact, he was he was plowing full
steam ahead, um and still wants to. But he hadn't
even he wasn't trying it on mice and monkeys, you know,
Like he hooked up with someone who was. I was like, oh, well,
you're you're doing the real work. Let's get together on this.
So his um, his idea was that he would have
(35:14):
to practice on cadavers. Yeah, he needed to practice on cadavers.
But apparently that would come after practicing on um animals,
and apparently he according to bioethesis, he would be hard
pressed to get approval even to carry out an experiment
(35:34):
like this on animals these days, the most medical ethics
boards would be like, no, this is unnecessary, this is
not you shouldn't be doing this, so don't do that.
At least in the United States, I should say, well,
he's never gonna do this here. He would almost certainly
have to do this. In China they have a lot
more latitude. I saw there's this hospital in Vietnam that's
(35:55):
like US, US, we'll do it because they probably can
get funding and uh press means yeah, I would imagine.
I know they went to the Russians because this gentleman
is Russian and he thought he could get the government
to chip in and they said no. And so now
he is literally trying to raise money by selling things,
(36:19):
raise bread. He's trying to raise bread by selling like
mugs and key chains and stuff. This is not a
lie with his head on, like these these muscular bodies
and stuff. Wow, So it's uh I did see. I
finally found it said between ten and a hundred million dollars,
which is pretty big. Uh latitude there, Yeah, I mean
(36:42):
there's like there's a it's pretty easy to point at
Canavero and be like, here, what's what's what's your deal man?
But it makes it easy to to look past um
the patient spiritanovs UM situation, you know, like I'm sure
he wants this to work so bad. Sure it's heartbreaking,
(37:04):
you know, yeah, I mean so much so that like
he said, he doesn't want to just be an expensive
euthan asia procedure. But he also said, you know, I'm
headed toward death here soon, Like why not? Yeah? I
saw one other thing. You got anything else there? I
(37:24):
saw that another objection to this by the medical community
would be that it could conceivably raise the yuck factor.
That's what they call it UM among organ donation, just
around among the general public. And this yuck factor. I
checked it out because it was in scare quotes. It's
a real thing, UM and it's basically the general public's
(37:49):
um discussed toward bio like bioaugmentation, weird surgeries, UM, odd transplants.
This this head transplant, body or body transplant or head
transplant falls right into that weird yuck factor, almost like
the Uncanny Valley. And I read this article about it,
(38:10):
and apparently there's something there's a debate going on on
whether humans have an inner wisdom of what is good
or bad or acceptable, and when our yuck factor is activated,
it's actually an inner wisdom that's saying that's not okay,
don't do that. And this this author was arguing that
(38:31):
that's not true, that it's actually what is called folk biology,
that humans are kind of prewired to have an idea
of what's natural and what's normal, and we're just simply
grossed out when we're faced with something that challenges that normalcy.
But it doesn't mean that it's right or wrong. There's
this debate over which one is correct, folk biology or
(38:55):
the inner wisdom. That's interesting. It is pretty interesting. Well,
we at an entire show in two thousand and ten,
I think January or maybe it was June started the
j and it wasn't July. I wrote it down, but
I just threw it away anyway, How organ donation works.
(39:17):
That was a good one. And the therapeutic hypothermia want
to check that out too. Yeah, Well, if you want
to know more about this head transplant operation, you can
type those words in the search part. How stuff works
and it'll bring up a great article. And since I
said that, it's time for listener mayo, I'm going to
(39:37):
call this, um what should I call this one? I'm
gonna call this anniversary of the podcast. Hey guys, my
name is JP and I'm a business administration major at
Christopher Newport University, currently studying at the University of Glasgow.
Uh going into my senior year. Writing on my twenty
(40:00):
first birthday, which is also the fourth anniversary that I
began following the podcast my little brother introduced me to
That's Why I sk and now immediately binged roughly three episodes.
I'm not sure how many people right and saying this,
but I can probably say listen to every single one.
And yes, I know the episode in context of Hippie
Rob's emergence. They haven't talked about him in a long time. No,
(40:21):
he's been long gone. He seems like he would be
like an assistant to the surgeon, you know, hippie. I
don't think that'd be a good idea. No, No, it's
a bad idea. And I don't mean a medical assistant.
I mean like a you know, he did the jiu
jitsu on the Idiot questions. Maybe but it just be
some like clumsy like BrownHouse kick that it's just like
(40:43):
six inches off the ground. The past four years have
been some of the most influential on my life as
a whole. Uh in your podcast has played a huge
part now I'm matured as an adult through Chuck's soft
spoken tone and Josh's optimistic demeanor. How about that? As
well as Jerry's elite producing abilities. The podcast has made
(41:04):
me look forward to Tuesday's something I never thought was possible.
I guess he doesn't listen to Thursdays. Optimistic. Yeah, optimistic
demeanor that's you never never would have called that one.
Aside from how much I enjoy that maybe has us confused.
Maybe because you have a soft spoken tone. Aside from
how much I enjoy the podcast, you really shaped how
(41:26):
I think things through as well as my perspective on
many issues. People often forget that some matters have multiple
sides to them and that a full opinion should be
developed from all the facts. I figured today was the
most fitting to write in given how much the show
means to me, continue to look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Oh there you go, Uh, And I'm anxiously waiting for
the release of your next live tour schedule. Please come
(41:48):
to d c H. I think we are at some
point right. I've even gone as far as debating whether
to get a tattoo excuse me to two of the
iconic stuff you should know microphone, but not sure Mom
would approve of it. Um, John, I'm gonna say, don't
do that. I don't know, John, Maybe you do it,
(42:08):
don't do it. I have high hopes that you'll do
You're optimistic demeanor. Anyways, keeping keep doing what you're doing, guys.
I'll be cheering from the sideline as you continue towards
your goal of world domination. Cheers from Scotland. John Patrick, Vitty,
Oh wow, and that was nice little touch at the end.
Thank you, Uh, and everybody in Glasgow, Chuck, and I
(42:31):
know it's Glasgow, but we like saying Glasgow. It rolls
off the tongue. Did I say, gal m, who is that?
John Patrick? That's right? Thanks a lot, John, We appreciate it. Uh.
I say, go for the tattoo, but probably shouldn't listen
to me, I say, don't. You should probably listen to
Chuck if you want to know more about oh man,
(42:53):
something's wrong with me today, dude. If you want to
get in touch with me and Chuck like John did,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or josh Im Clark. You can hang out with
us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know
or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
an email. That stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us sort of home on
(43:14):
the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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