Chinese surgeon prepares for world's first head transplant
'Was Dr Frankenstein a good man or a bad man?' asks Ren Xiaoping, while rejecting comparison with the fictional character, as he and his team of young researchers move closer to performing the first human head transplant, writes Simon Parry
As he drives me to his laboratory in Harbin, northeast China, the surgeon who made headlines around the world by conducting a successful head transplant on a monkey - and who is preparing to do the same operation on a human patient as early as next year - asks a rather startling question: "Was Dr Frankenstein a good man or a bad man?"
Dr Ren Xiaoping has heard a great deal about British novelist Mary Shelley's gothic horror creation since he returned to Heilongjiang province in 2012 from the United States, where he was educated, to work as an orthopaedic surgeon at a hospital and at a government-funded laboratory. Even Chinese state media have compared the 55-year-old to Shelley's character Dr Victor Frankenstein.
How surgeons have wrestled with practice and ethics of head transplants
Since his return to China, Ren has built up a team of young doctors who are preparing for the first human head transplant by experimenting on rats, mice, pigs, monkeys and human corpses as part of a handsomely resourced project that reflects the country's determination to become a world leader in science.
Shortly after taking office, President Xi Jinping implored top scientists to strive for "innovation, innovation, innovation" to help fulfil what he calls the "Chinese dream". Today, Ren's team at Harbin Medical University are on the cusp of realising their macabre yet remarkable part of that dream.
In the summer of 2015, they successfully carried out a head transplant on a monkey, which lived for 20 hours (albeit without any attempt to reconnect its spinal cord) before being euthanised. Since then, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, who worked with Ren on the operation in Harbin, has identified a paralysed Russian patient willing to undergo a head transplant to save his life.
If the science is ready - and that is a massive "if" - Ren is expected to take charge of the operation on Valery Spiridonov, a 31-year-old with severe muscular atrophy who faces an early death as his bodily organs stop functioning.
