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VLADIMIR DEMIKHOV WAS a pioneering surgeon.
Without his contributions to science and medicine, organ transplant and coronary surgery may not be as developed as it is today – a fact that is not well known because his papers were written in Russian while living on the bleaker side of the Cold War and through World War II.
Some of his peers noticed though.
Christiaan Neethling Barnard, the South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant, said in 1997: “I have always maintained that if there is a father of heart and lung transplantation then Demikhov certainly deserves this title”.
Gazing back at Demikhov’s early experiments that led to many successes in the operation rooms, however, can offer an uncomfortable experience.
He was the first person to perform a successful coronary artery bypass operation on a warm-blooded creature but, yet, became more famous for his two-headed dog.
In fact, many of his experiments were carried out on dogs. He transplanted lungs and hearts, took organs out to see how long dogs would survive and watched their reactions to the new organs.
By far the most unusual experiments and surgeries included the transplantation of the head or half the body. In 1948, he wrote about the “surgical combination of two animals with the creation of a single circulation”.
(Photo ITAR-TASS / P. Khorenko; Juzef Mosenzhnik)
In this image, Demikhov shows photographers how he stitched the head and upper body of a two-month-old puppy onto the neck of a four-year-old mongrel Mukhtar.
The work was carried out in the reanimation lab of the A.A.Bogomolets Physiology Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
In 1968, Demikhov transplanted another puppy’s head onto the neck of another dog. The creatures survived for 38 days. Its bodies were then stuffed and in 1988 given to Riga’s Museum of History of Medicine.
For the past two years, it has travelled around Germany for exhibitions. It returned to Latvia earlier this week.
(Warning: Graphic images that some viewers may find too disturbing)
(YouTube Credit: RussianFootageCom)
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I have no words for how upsetting that is
Well then you need to get a thesaurus!
Barbaric.
Yes this footage is very disturbing, but the fact is, people just didn’t discover how to do transplants over night, unfortunately people and animals were harmed, but can you imagine a world where we didn’t know how to do a heart, kidney, liver transplant?. Why he put another head on a dog is still puzzling, I’m sure he thought it would be beneficial in one way or another.
How could that be beneficial dublinlad? It is one thing to perform a transplant, quite another to transplant head of a dog onto another. Perhaps he was trying to advance his own ego rather than medicine.
This is a perfect example of just because we can do something doesnt automatically mean we should.
Dublinlad is right, it is cruel but the actions of these “scientists” working at the the concentration camps in Russia China and Germany have resulted in saving millions of lives.
@Irene,
I’m not saying he was right, I’m saying that he obviously had his own reasons, one of them could have been his ego, or that he wanted to bread a new set of super two headed soldier dogs.
Something odd.
I wonder something odd, how relevant the two headed dog experiment was in saving the millions of lives you speak of. Remember we are not talking about experiments on organ transplant here the article is about transplanting the upper body of a dog onto another. As a trained biochemist I am well aware of how experiments on animals have advanced science and medicine. I am also aware of unecessary suffering that was inflicted on animals because of unecessary experiments.
Thankfully nowadays there are much tighter restrictions on animal use. Like I have said before, just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.
Sometimes two heads are better than one.
The idea behind things like this and the head transplants that were done with monkeys was to be able eventually to do this with humans. The aim was to help paraplegics especially whose bodies had started to shut down by transplanting their heads onto new bodies.
Interesting concept dave transplant the upper body of a person onto another person ( who would have to be live). Do you have a viable citation?
Something odd, while millions were murdered? Are you serious?
@dave clougher. It would seem you are right. Such experiments including Demikhov’s foundling work ie “2 headed dogs” ( i think he produced 19 or so of them) and later Robert White’s 2 headed monkey came under fire from non medical and medical fields alike questioning their validity/ surgical application not to mention animal cruelty. Nowadays It has been proposed that head transplants may be beneficial for quadriplegics or terminally ill patients undergoing organ failure ( effectively a body would still be rendered quadriplegic because as yet there is no way to mend severed spinal cord). There are huge ethical issues with head transplants though for animals and humans not to mention medical complexities.
Looks like there was method to Demikhov’s supposed “madness” other than ego or doing it because he could. Have to say though, in all honesty, I’m still horrified by it. who knows though, one day head transplants in humans may be as normalised as heart/ lung/ other organ transplant.
The citations I found on topic are ( asked for it earlier)
The citations I found to back up your statement are ^ “The Future of Brain Transplants”. NOVA. Retrieved 2012-05-11.
^ Krauthammer, Charles (January 19 1998). “Of Headless Mice…And Men”. Time. Discusses headless cloned humans
Tex Heart Inst J. 2009; 36(5): 453–458.
PMCID: PMC2763473
At the Cutting Edge of the Impossible- A Tribute to Vladimir P. Demikhov Igor E. Konstantinov, MD, PhD
Horrible cruelty. If people want to further human knowledge then they should find some willing volunteers to experiment with.
At the risk of invoking Godwins, somebody did. Josef Mengele.
Very true.he tortured children injecting them with air, other people blood and removed organs while they were awake to document how long they lived for. Mostly on young jewish children.
Thing is his experiments found way into medical research after the war
Same with unit 731. The americans left off those japanese doctorsin return for research papers. If you want sleepless night look up unit 731 they made germans look sweet and kind
None were willing volunteers just like these dogs.
Key word: willing
It maybe cruel, but without it we wouldn’t be where we are today with medical science.
I’d rather take the hit on our medical progress than have subjected countless animals and humans to extreme torture just so some fat shite can get a heart transplant at 55.
Ye, peados. Can start with the CC.
yeah medical science has a dark history. the thing is millions have been saved with this research but its not worth it. we would still get there just slower and more morally right.
@the mule, two dogs or your fathers life?
I can’t see any benefit to the two headed dog experiment. The only thing thy came from it was unnecessary suffering.
There would have been some point to it.can’t see it
Father of modern organ transplanting maybe, but he was a f!cking depraved psycho! Look at them all smiling there at the poor dogs! It’s enough to make a dr mengele warm inside.
I think his work was amazing. Barbaric is certainly a way to describe it but unfortunately it was necessary to learn about circulatory systems and ultimately the immense specificity from one animal to another… increasing our understanding of organ acceptance and rejection. Compare this to the experiments on human anatomy during the early medical years where a slave was tied to a table and cut open to see how everything works! No analgesics used, no return… they died where they lay… and even those experiments have led to our understanding today!
Kieran- take your point, but your statement that this experiment ( ie transplanting the head of a dog onto another) was necessary to learn about the circulatory system …..increasing our understanding of organ acceptance and rejection is questionable.
Necessary? Really? Do you not think there was plenty other more relevant experiments on organ transplant being done before/ during/ since that time to provide necessary ( and more valid) information regarding circulation and organ rejection issues rather than resorting to transplanting the head of one animal to another?
Glad to see that there is much tighter regulation on the use of animals in medicine nowadays.
Irene, I think you are naive to believe that this does not continue to happen. There are developed countries that unashamedly flout the Geneva convention. one can only imagine what animal research experiments continue to take place.
Shanners. I said I was glad there is much tighter regulation in animal use. There is as a whole. I appreciate that some countries are better at this than others. The uk for instance is very strict. There is unfortunately still unecessary experimentation and testing that still goes on eg testing of cosmetics and worse besides.
An article such as this is bound to throw up polarised views. Some people who think its okay to subject animals to any kind of experiment in the name of ‘ advancing science’ others thinking its wrong to use animals in biomedicine full stop. For the former, no its not okay to subject animals to any kind of experiment ‘just because we can’. for the latter, removing animals from biomedical research, though animal use is much reduced to what it was, is not possible at present. Its easy to abstractly frown upon the use of animals in biomedicine but tell that to the person waiting for the lung transplant or who has been diagnosed with cancer and requires radio/ chemotherapy ( which has been experimented on with animals).
The important thing is to ensure proper regulation such that unecessary experiments such as the barbaric one shown in the article do not happen.
Irene, I think you are talking in circles. You have made it clear that you dislike this experiment of surgically attaching a dog’s head onto another, and yet you say it is necessary to those who outright reject it. I don’t doubt that you know what you’re talking about, but as none of us lived in the time of Demikhov, we can only speculate. Correcting others where they are mistaken is not wrong, but forcing your opinion on others is. Please don’t get the idea that I’m trying to offend you, because I’m not.
Disgusting
That is extremely upsetting, I can see so medical reason for it.
Thank God this type of experimentation was done away with! That made me sick to my stomach …..
They must have been barking mad!
That is wuff!
I saw a two headed dog yesterday – it also had six legs, a double body and a very waggy tail. It must have been tired though as both heads were panting with their tongues hanging out…
Two faced bitch..
Sharks with frikkin laser beams attached to their heads, that’s what is needed.
O my god. Poor dogs, so upsetting. Maybe he thought he was doin it for the good but I think he must have got a sick kick out of it. Takes a sick person to perform that. He is the person that needed fuc…g help. Poor poor dogs
Doesn’t the fact that he managed to successfully combine two animals and keep them alive astound any one? It’s an incredible achievement! I appreciate what people are saying about animal cruelty but saying he is evil and calling him a psycho are way off the mark!
If it wasn’t for experiments like this, we wouldn’t be where we are today in terms of human transplantation. Surely people can see the benefit in that?
It comes with a warning that some viewers may find this too disturbing and then people watch it and give out about it. You are silly and I wish you harm
I’m glad he’s dead! What a horrible man..
FG/Labour is proof a two-headed dog can bite the hands that feed it.
Aw ya but its FG’s fault that the owner of the dog cant afford to feed one of its mouths let alone two. labour should be ashamed. Shell to sea. Blah blah blah blah
Classic journal.
They post some online curiosity which featured on reddit a few months back and then the comments start coming in from grandparents who have recently “gone online” relating everything to some political situation that does not affect them because (a) they are the only group that has been insulated from financial hardship (b) they will be dead soon enough so it doesn’t matter.
Officially the experiment was called FF & FG. What was funny is how many people kept petting the freak thinking this time it won’t bite me. But alas it did everytime
Evil !!!
For all those complaining about cruelty etc. How many of you would accept an organ transplant tomorrow if you needed one to survive? I bet all of you would and that would make you a hypocrite. What I think is an abomination is the disgusting language directed towards this pioneering scientist whose work lead to medical procedures that have saved countless lives. Sure these clips aren’t fun to watch but you should be glad these people were able to overcome whatever natural reservations they may have had to proceed with such necessary work. Unless you’re a medical doctor who is familiar with the body of knowledge on the circulatory system and organ transplants at the time you can’t really say these experiments were without reason and the scientists were doing it just for kicks.
Exactly how do people think medical science has developed and evolved. I am a committed animal lover and have a number of rescue dogs however if these experiments led to the saving of one human life then they where valid. This is a man who dedicated his life to mrdicine and saving lives. If you or one of your family needed a transplant procedure then I am damn certain the suffering of 10, 20 or 100 dogs would not bother you so much. This genius is responsible for bettering and prolonging the lives of countless people. Who the hell are we to judge that work or the ethics behind it and compare him to some of the worlds greatest war criminals. We can only evaluate his work on the basis of how it advanced medicine and improved the life of many.
You are not an animal lover if you would willingly swap the lives and suffering of hundreds of animals for your own health. What a selfish hypocrite you are.
I would sacrifice my own life to save someone I loved and I would certainly not hesitate to sacrifice an animals. As for the rest of your comment its a little ptesumtious of you to judge me when you have never met me. If you place the value of an animals life above or equal to that of a human then I think you need to review your own morality.
We’re not talking about direct sacrifices here. We’re talking about utterly insane levels of cruetly and torture against huge numbers of confused and defenceless animals that suffer exactly as we would suffer. And for what? So that some selfish rich boomers can try and live forever and replace the knackered parts of their bodies which they’ve spent their whole lives abusing.
Bit of a distorted view of transplant patients there. Plenty of children and healthy-living people who need and deserve a second chance.
i just feel sick lookin at these photos,
Why did they think this would be a useful experiment? I can’t think of even one purpose
This is an absolute abomination.
I really find this footage upsetting! I just wonder what is in the minds of these people! Such a terrible thing to do to a dog! Or any Animal for that! Horrible!
Disgusting and vile the poor animals did anyone look at the next video the human head on the dogs body sick sick sick … Why ???
ABSOLUTELY SICK!!! THE POOR DOGS. HAVE THEY NO SHAME???
bastard should have been shot, would have been a good man for hitler.
I think this is case of two heads not being better than one…
Boom
I try…
Dogs abuse !
I can understand the necessity in having to advance in surgery to begin with, but whilst organ transplants were vital for progression, quite a few of his experiments were fiercely cruel. For example, he would literally remove the dogs’ organs and count down the seconds until they died.
We know dogs can’t live without their hearts, kidneys, etc, and we know that humans can’t either. It’s obvious that the time frame between the removal of a canine heart from a dog and the removal of a human heart from a person would be different, it’s blatantly obvious, even for his time. So how did removing a dogs’ organs and counting seconds help human progression? It could help create machines to aid in canine organ transplantation, but it is also reliant on loads of other factors.
Some of his work really did help surgery progress, but some of it really fails to answer the ethical questions behind what he was doing.
Really, he just justified his actions with science and kept doing experiments because he enjoyed it.
There’s a lot of messed up, twisted and hypocritical moral compasses here.
Woof woof!
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