Head transplant bid sparks ethics debate
Print Edition
A SURGEON in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province has triggered public debate after announcing plans to perform a head transplant on primates after successfully operating on mice.
Ren Xiaoping, a doctor with the No.2 affiliated hospital of Harbin Medical University, successfully transplanted the head of one mouse to another’s body in 2013.
Ren’s team has since performed nearly 1,000 such operations, though very few survive long after the surgery. The team has been working on perfecting the operation and announced plans to test the procedure on monkeys in the future, without going into detail.
Ren studied and worked in the United States before returning to China three years ago. He said head transplants present the ultimate challenge for medical experts.
“How to reconnect the donor and recipient spinal cords, how to keep the brain alive during the transfer and how to prevent the body from rejecting the head are all technical difficulties we need to overcome,” he said.
Each small step of progress in medical science requires countless tries and even failures, he said.
As a scientific researcher and a doctor, he hopes such experiments might help people with spinal cord injuries or muscular dystrophy in the future.
His ambitious plan, more at home in science fiction, is beyond many people’s imagination and has drawn hot debate in both real and virtual settings.
A typical comment on social media is that if these experiments can help patients with incurable diseases and scientists in other countries have also been conducting such research they should be allowed.
World’s first attempt
The world’s first attempted head transplant on a monkey dates back to 1970, when American neurosurgeon Robert White transplanted the head of one monkey to the body of another. The monkey died several days later.
The most recent planned head transplant was announced by Italian physician Sergio Canavero, who said he will transplant a human head to a new body in 2017. He has identified a 30-year-old Russian man who suffers from a rare genetic disorder as the first patient, according to CNN.
However, skepticism remains on the feasibility of head transplants and Ren has faced criticism on violation of animal rights, as well as potential moral and ethical problems.
Jiang Jinsong, associate professor with the Institute of Science, Technology and Society of Tsinghua University in Beiijing, said such costly operations might never be within the realm of possibility. He also criticized the use of animals in medical experiments as unnecessary and cruel.
One online comment read: “Humans don’t have the right to kill animals for the purpose of saving humans themselves.”
Wang Yifang, a medical ethics expert with the Institute of Medical Humanities at Peking University, welcomes possible breakthroughs in medical science brought by a successful head transplant on animals.
But when it comes to human head transplants, he believes there are stricter ethical evaluations that need to take place.
“It’s very complicated. You have your own head but another’s body, so who are you and who is your family?” he asked. “We don’t know what will happen. But the fact humans can do the surgical procedure in the future does not mean they should.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
