Off with your heads: isolated organs in early Soviet science and fiction

Abstract

In the summer of 1925, a debutant writer, Aleksandr Beliaev, published a ‘scientific-fantastic story’, which depicted the travails of a severed human head living in a laboratory, supported by special machinery. Just a few months later, a young medical researcher, Sergei Briukhonenko, succeeded in reviving the severed head of a dog, using a special apparatus he had devised to keep the head alive. This paper examines the relationship between the literary and the scientific experiments with severed heads in post-revolutionary Russia, which reflected the anxieties about death, revival, and survival in the aftermath of the 1914–1923 ‘reign of death’ in that country. It contrasts the anguished ethical questions raised by the story with the public fascination for ‘science that conquers death’.

Medical propaganda: Fairy tales and miracles of surgery

“…He also shows how the revolution in sciences' public visibility got crossed with the Bolshevik revolution and the 'death decade' in Russia, during which 'some fifteen to twenty million people out of a population of 140 million in Russia died' . 6 Krementsov focuses on the institutional development of endocrinology in that period as well as personal interactions between the main actors and their reflection in literary works.…”

Els trasplantaments a la literatura: un empelt de ciència i ficció

“…It was also published in another magazine, and as a revised and longer book the following year. Ten years later the author expanded it, and the new version became one of the most famous Russian science fiction stories to ever be published (Krementsov, 2009). The story takes place in Paris, although some sources place it in the United States.…”

“…In the case of the head that was kept alive, the writer did not need to inspire the doctor nor vice versa: Both were immersed in a common environment in which these projects could lead them to scientific experimentation and to literary creation (Krementsov, 2009). Thus, death and the potential reversal of this fatal process thanks to science were especially interesting, but the ethical debate was not completely absent.…”

“…De Kerangal explains that cardiac arrest is not the symbol of death anymore: It has been replaced by the suspension of (Mollaret & Goulon, 1959). It was a major step towards being able to source more organs, although it was not the original objective of the creation and evolution of the concept; the aim was to provide medical attention to sick people in extreme situations (Machado et al, 2007). De Kerangal explains, in detail, everything that surrounds a transplant: how the young man's parents receive the news, how they listen to the doctor who asks for the organs, their doubts, their refusal and, finally, their approval.…”

Desire, indefinite lifespan, and transgenerational brains in literature and film

“…The imaginary brain’s indefinite lifespan differentiates fiction from various techno-scientific attempts to conquer death via rejuvenation or organ preservation. In the experiments with severed dog heads in post-revolutionary Russia (Krementsov, 2009, 2013), brain transplantation was to provide a new but limited lease of life. A century later, we have the Italian neurologist Sergio Canavero, whose project for “cephalosomatic anastomosis” (i.e., “head transplantation with spinal linkage”) was in February 2015 discussed under the title “First human head transplant could happen in two years” (Thomson, 2015).…”