A 'Head Transplant'? Medicine Gone Mad!
A surgical team's plan to perform the first-ever human head transplant is unethical, says Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations.
"Believing in the sanctity of life from a biblical point of view, how do you ethically do this?" Stevens asked in an interview with The Christian Post on Monday, noting the procedure's "risk to the patient is just enormous."
"There's no way to ethically do this type of experiment when you haven't proven it in the lab. What happens when it doesn't work? Patient's head has been severed and they're going to die," he said.
Last week, Dr. Ren Xiaoping of Harbin Medical University in China announced his plans to perform a head transplant operation on a human despite hundreds of similar attempts on lab mice ending in failure as each animal died within minutes.
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Stevens questioned the ability of Ren and his team to get "true informed consent," given the likely mindset of a candidate for the procedure, which is aimed at helping quadriplegics.
