Heads you lose: decapitation experiments in quest of a longer lifespan

Hong Kong tycoon Ricky Wong repeats a bloody gamble that has not paid off since the guillotine was invented

HONG KONG––Centuries of myth,  legend,  and business reporting demonstrate that when an aging mad scientist has more money than brains,  his thoughts often turn toward seeking immortality,  typically through bizarre ritual sacrifice.

Ricky Wong,  founder and chair of the Hong Kong Television Network,  the Hong Kong Broadband Network Ltd.,  and the Hong Kong Technology Venture Company,  a leading entrepreneur in telecommunications and related technology since his teens,  is to turn 65 on December 13,  2026.

The latest Hong Kong Technology Venture Company annual report,  published on March 30,  2026,  disclosed “38 experiments over the past four years in which ‘animals’ limbs or heads were separated from their bodies,'”  reported Hans Tse for the Hong Kong Free Press.

Wants results,  chop-chop!!!

“The experiments,  part of an ongoing ‘Life Science Project,'”  Tse revealed,  “aim to develop equipment to maintain ‘the viability of detached body organs,’  according to the company.

The Hong Kong Technology Venture Company annual report said,  Tse summarized,  “that the animal limbs remained viable for about 46 hours,  while heads survived for roughly seven hours, which its research team claimed was the world’s first.”

Stated the annual report,  “Should the technologies we are developing prove successful, they could have applications in organ transplantation and potentially in extending human lifespan.

“However,  at present,  the annual report admitted,  “we are unable to accurately predict the project’s success rate or financial returns,  nor can we reliably forecast its long-term development.”

About a third of the Hong Kong Technology Venture Company budget,  equivalent to about $5.7 million in U.S. dollars,  is allocated to the Life Science Project,  the Hong Kong Free Press indicated.

“We protest against this.”

Local animal advocates responded immediately.

“Do we really have to sacrifice animals’ lives in order to advance human well-being?” asked Louis Ng,  speaking for a Hong Kong organization whose name translates as Animal Rights Education by Non-profit Making Veterinary Services Society.

“We protest against this,  against these cruel experiments involving the separation of heads and bodies,”  Ng told media.  “We also hope that animal testing can gradually be replaced,  and that animals will no longer have to be sacrificed.”

Wrote People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vice president of Asia campaigns Jason Baker in an April 1,  2026 open letter to Ricky Wong, “In addition to being cruel,  this research is purely exploratory,  with highly speculative benefit.”

Baker cited a variety of studies published between 2008 and 2015,   arguing that “Studies examining spinal cord injury experiments on animals show that decades of such work have not led to significant progress in reviving spinal neurons,  because of fundamental interspecies differences.”

“Not intended to cause unnecessary harm to the animals” says company

The Hong Kong Technology Venture Company told the Hong Kong Free Press by email that the Life Science Project “is not intended to cause unnecessary harm to the animals,  with the objective of improving the quality of life for the elderly,  while contributing to advances in organ preservation,  limb transplantation,  and blood regeneration.”

Summarized Tse,  “The company said the experiments used pigs and sheep,  calling them ‘species that are commonly used’ in scientific research on organ transplantation.

“Anesthetics were used during the experiments,  and the procedures were in line with ‘regulations regarding laboratory animal ethics [issued] by the government,’  the Hong Kong Technology Venture Company added.

“Led by professionals”

“The research team is led by professionals,”  Tse continued,  “such as ‘neurosurgeons, neurologists,  veterinarians,  university professors,  anesthesiologists,  and research specialists,’  the company said,  without providing the names of the team members.”

The Hong Kong Technology Venture Company also avowed that the Life Science Project head experiments would continue.

Opponents of the head experiments on April 10,  2026 “staged a protest outside Hong Kong Technology Venture Company headquarters to condemn” what they called the ‘technology group’s years of horrific experiments in which dozens of animals have been decapitated,  dismembered,  and kept alive for up to seven hours,”  reported Tom Grundy for the Hong Kong Free Press.

“Straight out of a horror film”

“Four PETA Asia supporters posed as pigs and sheep,  languishing in mock blood,”  Grundy described.

“HKTV’s disturbing head and limb severing experiments are straight out of a horror film,  and they must be stopped before another animal endures a terrifying and prolonged death,”  said Baker in a media release announcing the demonstration.

“Experiments on animals overwhelmingly fail to benefit human health,”  Baker added.  “PETA is urging everyone to speak out against this cruelty by refusing to buy products from the HKTV mall until HKTV bans these experiments.”

“Off with her head!”

When the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland screamed “Off with her head!” readers easily recognized her as mad as the Mad Hatter.

But the fantasy that immortality may be obtained through head transplantation traces back at least as far as the design of the guillotine by French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814),  an early opponent of the death penalty who hoped that quick decapitation would be a less painful method of execution than the methods then in use.

The prototype guillotine was built three years later,  in 1792,   by French physician and vivisector Antoine Louis (1723-1792).

Louis himself barely lived long enough to see the device used,  but soon afterward fellow vivisector Jean César Legallois (1770-1814) initiated a series of experiments with decapitated heads,  both human and animal,  hoping to discover how to restore life to the dead.

Robert White

These experiments inspired generations of successors,  perhaps most notoriously Robert White (1926-2010),  a longtime professor of neurosurgery at Case Western University in Cleveland,  Ohio,  also a longtime science advisor to the Vatican,  and outspoke defender of animal use in biomedical research.

White between 1963 and 1968  killed approximately 30 rhesus macaques in the attempt to make the head of one animal live on the body of another.

Then-Washington Post health writer Larry Thompson reported in 1988 that White built on work begun by a French scientist who in 1887 tried to graft the heads of newly guillotined prisoners to the bodies of large dogs.

Russian researchers tried to keep severed dogs’ heads alive by mechanical means in 1912.  That inspired Bolshevik medical doctor Mikail Bulgakov to lampoon both his own profession and the scientism of the Soviet state a decade later in his satirical novel Heart Of A Dog (1925),  the first of several works that eventually inspired the dictator Josef Stalin to exile him to his 1940 death of deprivation.

“In 1964,”  Thompson continued,   “Dr. David Gilboe of the University of Wisconsin in Madison reported decapitating 15 dogs and keeping the heads alive with pumps.”

Macaques lived 36 hours or less

By then,  White had already transplanted a macaque’s head to another body.  News media said the head appeared conscious after awakening from anesthesia,   snapped at researchers’  hands,  and lived more than a week.

The claim that at least one of White s transplanted heads survived a week was often echoed,  including by White.

But Thompson,  apparently after investigating medical literature,  reported that “The longest surviving Case Western monkey lived only 36 hours.”

Because White could not successfully link the nerves from one animal’s spine to another’s brain,  none of the heads ever had any control of bodily functions.  The bodies to which they were attached were in effect just biological pumps,  circulating blood to the mute heads much as Gilboe’s machines did.

Lost funding by 1970

By 1970,  appalled colleagues reportedly saw to it that White’s head transplant work never again received funding.

Jim Fields,  introduced as a “video producer and journalist for Time magazine,”  by Hannah Waters in a February 25,  2011 retrospective about White,   in 2007  produced a documentary detailing White’s experiments,  called A: Head, B: Body,  incorporating film clips made by White himself.

“Judging by his CV alone,”  Waters wrote,  “neuroscientist Robert White appears to have been an accomplished physician/scientist.  He performed over 10,000 brain surgeries in his lifetime,  authored more than 900 publications,  and developed brain cooling techniques that revolutionized modern brain surgery.

“But he is not usually remembered for these achievements.  Instead,  his name conjures up images of the bizarre animal experiments he performed.”

Real mad scientists

Assessed Fields,  who made his documentary in consultation with White,  “Real mad scientists are not lone wolves like in the movies.  They’re doing things that are sanctioned in their time and place,  in society,  that are only considered by later values to be wrong.”

But from the villagers who besieged Victor Frankenstein’s castle in vegetarian and proto-animal rights advocate Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein,  to the protesters in the street outside the Hong Kong Technology Venture Company,  head transplants have widely been considered wrong in the very times and places when and where they have been done,  or even suggested.

And in more than 230 years of attempts,  head transplants have yet to keep any mad scientist or crazy old rich man alive beyond a normal human lifespan.

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