Italian surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero created a stir in the medical community in April when he announced plans in the near future to perform the world’s first head transplant surgery. His patient would be Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man born with the rare genetic Wernig-Hoffman disorder characterised by wasting of muscles.
Over the weekend, it appeared that South Africa had beaten Canavero when it did the first successful head transplant surgery in the world on February 10, according to a report by Web site
Controversialfiles.net. The alleged patient, 36-year-old Paul Horner, had one month to live due to his bone cancer diagnosed in2010 when the 19-hour surgery was performed at the Charlotte Maxexe Johannesburg Academic Hospital in the country’s capital city. Horner is an American, but the procedure was done in South Africa because it was easier to acquire approval for the procedure outside the U.S.
According to Professor Myron Danus, head surgeon, their target was for Horner to be fully functional in 24 months. However, five months after the surgery, Horner is already 85 percent functional with the ability to walk, talk and do many things a healthy person does, Danus disclosed, the report claimed.
He adds that the patient is also free from cancer, thanks to the parents of a 21-year-old man who was involved in a major car crash in 2012 and declared brain dead. While his body was fine, his brain had stopped functioning.
Danus told Controversial Files, “We received approval from the young man’s parents to use their son’s body to do the operation. They were extremely happy their son could save a life even in the vegetated state that he was in.”
However, while the Web site does not state on its “About Us” section that it is a satire portal, an Internet search at the Web site of Charlotte Maxexe Johannesburg Academic Hospital, where the surgery allegedly took place, yields negative result. Similarly, the quote it cited from CNN is not found on the new site and comparison with a real article on the world successful first penis transplant in South Africa shows the head transplant articles used the same photos from the former.
While all indicators point to a hoax, this does not make Canavero’s planned surgery a hoax, but many medical experts have a lot of questions on the method that the Italian surgeon plans to use and doubt if his procedure would succeed in giving Spiridonov a new lease on life. But the Russian man is willing to take chances rather than live a life longer under his present medical condition.
http://www.ibtimes.com.au/hoax-alert-south-africa-didnt-beat-italy-performing-worlds-1st-successful-head-transplant-surgery
A 36-year-old man has undergone the world’s first successful head transplant. The ground-breaking operation took a team of surgeons 19 hours to complete and has allowed the patient to be cancer-free.
ReplyDeletePaul Horner, who was diagnosed with bone cancer five years ago, was on the verge of death when he was approved for the controversial and possibly deadly operation.
Doctor Tom Downey, who was part of the South African team who carried out the operation, told CNN he is thrilled about the results.
“It’s a massive breakthrough. We’ve proved that it can be done – we can give someone a brand new body that is just as good, or better, than their previous one.
The success of this operation leads to infinite possibilities.”
Surgeons at Charlotte Maxexe Johannesburg Academic Hospital in SA did the operation in February but had to wait until they could confirm it was successful before they made any public statement.
Downey spoke to reporters on the complexity behind the first ever head transplant. “This procedure is another excellent example of how medical research, technical know-how and patient-centered care can be combined in the quest to relieve human suffering.”
The operation was led by Professor Myron Danus and took place on February 10, 2015.
“Our goal is for Horner to be fully functional in two years and so far we are very pleased by his rapid recovery,” said prof. Danus.
“Before the operation, Horner’s body was riddled with cancer and he had less than a month to live.
We were fortunate enough to find a donor body; a 21-year-old man who has been brain dead from a serious car accident that happened in 2012.
The boys body worked just fine, but his brain was not functioning whatsoever, and there was absolutely no chance of recovery.
He added: “We received approval from the young man’s parents to use their sons body to do the operation. They were extremely happy their son could save a life even in the vegetated state that he was in.”
The man, Horner, has made 85% recovery; walking, talking, doing things a healthy individual does…
http://nationalaccordnewspaper.com/2015/11/surgeons-cut-off-mans-head-in-worlds-first-successful-head-transplant-operation/
Example: [Collected via e-mail, April 2015]
ReplyDeleteWorld's First Head Transplant.. took place 3-5 days ago? WHAT THE High Heel is going on here? Is this real? I thought that they were not going to do this for 2 years.
Origins: Coincident with current news that Italian physician Dr. Sergio Canavero had lined up a volunteer subject for his planned attempt at undertaking the first human head transplant, the News Examiner web site published an article reporting that such a procedure had just taken place at the Charlotte Maxexe Johannesburg Academic Hospital in South Africa:
A 36-year-old man has undergone the world’s first successful head transplant. The ground-breaking operation took a team of surgeons nineteen hours to complete and has allowed the patient to be cancer-free.
Paul Horner, who was diagnosed with bone cancer five years ago, was on the verge of death when he was approved for the controversial and possibly deadly operation.
Doctor Tom Downey, who was part of the South African team who carried out the operation, told CNN he is thrilled about the results.
"It's a massive breakthrough," Downey said. "We've proved that it can be done — we can give someone a brand new body that is just as good, or better, than their previous one. The success of this operation leads to infinite possibilities."
Dr. Canavero's plans for effecting a human head transplant are expected to be at least two years away, and no such transplant has been undertaken (successfully or otherwise) in the meanwhile. The article about the South African transplant was a just a hoax from the News Examiner, a fake news site started by Paul Horner, the former lead writer for the similarly fake National Report web site. (Note the name of the putative transplant recipient in the News Examiner's story.)
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/headtransplant.asp
National Report is a website which posts fictional articles related to world events. It is described by Snopes.com as a fake news site,[by FactCheck.org as a satirical site and by Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post as part of a fake-news industry, making profits from "duping gullible Internet users with deceptively newsy headlines." The National Report describes itself as a "news and political satire web publication" and provides a disclaimer that "all news articles contained within National Report are fiction".
ReplyDeleteStories from the National Report have been taken seriously by third parties such as Fox News Channel, and the site drew criticism in October 2014 for running a series of fake stories about Ebola outbreaks in the United States, including the false report that the town of Purdon, Texas, has been quarantined after an outbreak. The story led to a traffic spike of two million unique visitors, and although the story was debunked by other websites, the original National Report story received six times as many "shares" on social media sites as the debunking stories did.[
The National Report carries a disclaimer identifying its content as satire and fake news, but there was no prominent link to this page until late December 2014. Numerous articles referring to National Report stories stated that National Report's disclaimer had been removed...
Paul Horner was the publication's lead writer; his employment began shortly after National Report went online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Horner#Paul_Horner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9D_A0wAH5Q
ReplyDelete