Head transplant: ethical and legal conflicts in the light of brazilian and italian laws

Abstract

This article aims to confront the procedure of head transplantation, designed by the Italian neurosurgeon Doctor Sergio Canavero, this study is based on the optics of ethic and legality, from the perspective of juspositivism and the comparison of national and Italian legislation. At first, it will introduce a layman perspective in medical terms about the procedure in order to illustrate the complexity of what the Italian doctor intends to achieve. Next, it will address ethical issues, whether it would be ethically correct to prioritize a single transplant instead of several unitary ones, how the disconnection of the spinal cord and the paralysis of the neocortex would eventually worsen the life condition of the recipient patient, and some notes on the safe surgery manual of the World Health Organization. In terms of comparative law, it will make a dialogue between the Brazilian and Italian legislation on organ transplantation in a positivist analysis of the norm and within the scope of ethics, also, it will approach the morality and bioethics of the procedure in the instance of the dignity and probability of patient worsening. The article will adopt a zetetic, inductive approach, in the field of effectiveness and positivism of the norm. Its methodological objective is reflective and exploratory and its research technique will be bibliographical and documental.