Chinese doctor: Do not consider the first implant to be a monster

Xiaoping Ren said that a head transplant would save many lives and it is important to change the notion that the first transplant is a monster.

"Frankenstein is a good person or a bad person?" Xiaoping Ren opened the story with reporter Red Door News, while driving two people across many crowded streets in the morning rush hour in Harbin to the city hospital.

According to Mirror, Harbin Hospital is where he works as an orthopedic surgeon, and is also the site of a Chinese government-funded laboratory to perform head-to-head transplant surgery. First in the history of world medicine.

He heard a lot of talk about Mary Shelley's horror novel, even the Chinese press often compared him to Victor Frankenstein, the monster doctor - the main character in the novel of the same name.

"Human transplants are a new peak in science. Some people say it is the ultimate limit in medicine. It is a sensitive topic, controversial, but if possible bring it into the forestry application. We will save many lives, " said the 55-year-old doctor.

Dr. Xiaoping Ren (right) and a colleague in the lab are studying anatomy of a monkey head.(Photo: Red Door News).

He built a team of young doctors who carried out numerous experiments to transplant the heads of rats, mice, pigs, monkeys and corpses. Ren's project is generously funded by the government, hoping to turn the country into a science and technology powerhouse. President Xi Jinping, when he headed the country in early 2013, told "creative, creative and creative scientists " the best way to implement the Chinese Dream.

Now, Dr. Ren's team at Harbin Medical University is trying to realize that dream. He was criticized as "reckless" , even getting worse comments from colleagues in the scientific community. However, many volunteer patients became Dr. Ren's test subjects.

Wang Huanming, 62, paralyzed gas factory worker from the neck down, is one of them. There is also Valery Spiridonov, 31, a Russian computer engineer with severe muscular atrophy, whose functions gradually degenerate to death.

Last summer, Ren transplanted the monkey's head "successfully," though it did not reconnect its spinal nerve. Animals live for 20 hours. He understood that science had to be perfected, and equally important was to remove the Frankenstein monster image in a human head transplant.

20 years ago, while practicing medicine in the US, Xiaoping Ren heard about Frankenstein. At that time he worked in the group of surgeons. Conducted the first human hand transplant in the United States.

"I only work as a scientist. People can say," You really are Frankenstein. "I don't care. I just focus on my work, my career in science. I don't give a specific schedule, but don't rule out the possibility of a transplant next year , " said Dr. Ren.

He refused to disclose that he practiced on how many primates are alive or on bodies.

"Many people are unethical", he said. "But what is human nature? The brain is human, not the body. The body is just an organ."

Change of concept

Dr. Ren is experimenting with pig head implants.(Photo: Red Door News).

The urgently working atmosphere flooded Harbin Hospital Medical Hospital. A group of students are preparing to transplant a head for a white mouse. In the main laboratory, a colleague is operating a mouse. The wall is full of transplant research charts, including an extremely gruesome image of a school dog transplant surgery in the 1950s.

Dr. Ren is originally from Harbin. He graduated from medical university and worked in the US for many years, returned to China 15 years ago to pursue a dream of transplants, even though his wife and two daughters remained in the United States.

"20 years ago when I came to the US, the academic world was exciting with the idea of ​​first transplanting. So is China now, China is developing very fast," he said of the reason for returning to the country to seek funding. can't be found in the US.

The Chinese government provided an initial grant of nearly $ 1.5 million to open the laboratory and provide annual funding for Dr. Ren and a team of more than 20 other experts to work under him.

They experimented on 1,000 mice, and none survived for more than a day.

"Small animals are different from humans , " Dr. Ren explained. "Monkeys are closest to anatomy and physiology, but very expensive."

A monkey head transplant surgery takes up to 20 hours. Dr. Ren hopes the head transplant will take about 30-40 hours. Experiments on human corpses have "helped us learn how to remove and connect the spinal nerve , " Dr. Ren said.

Another challenge is to keep the brain from being damaged when cut off from the body.

"A cold preserved finger can successfully transplant after three days. A kidney or a heart can live for a few hours. But a brain only has four minutes , " he said.

Three vital problems in surgery need to be overcome, namely: How to cut the spinal nerve and still connect with the intact nerves, how to maintain blood pressure for living brain, and how to eliminate post-transplant rejection.

Dr. Ren visited the hospital at Harbin Medical University Hospital, China.(Photo: Red Door News).

"If these three issues are resolved, you can come and ask me," When will the first head transplant take place? "And I will answer," Okay, tomorrow " ", doctor Ren said.

"It was an extremely important year. We are very close to it. We just need to reorganize our team and receive support to make this surgery successful."

He stressed that people need to become familiar with and accept the concept of head implants. When performing hand transplantation, human face transplantation, people expressed doubts and objections.

"People need to change their minds. We need society to support. People need to know more about this step. If it is not supported by public opinion, this process may take another 10 to 100 years, whether the technique is ready ".