Craddock does a good job addressing ethical issues and even suspicions of research fraud of which pioneers like the duo Alexis Carrel and Charles Lindbergh were accused (the author also never neglects to mention that both these gentlemen were also nasty eugenicists, misogynists and Nazi sympathisers).

Studying history only makes sense if you draw lessons for the present and the future, when you see recognise the past in the present, otherwise we just reassure ourselves how great and righteous we modern people are. Macchiarini’s trachea transplant patients: the full list Did he really never hear of what went on in his own university? Or was Craddock and his book censored by the regenerative medicine entrepreneurs at UCL? Yes, the Paolo Macchiarini scandal of deadly trachea transplants which also happened at UCL, in fact UCL still continues supporting their scientists in pursuing Macchiarini’s technology of airway replacement with decellurised scaffolds seeded with what these scientists call “stem cells”.Įven the nose reconstruction, something which Craddock describes as the ancient dawn of transplant surgery and dedicates many pages to, was part of that wider Macchiarini affair at UCL. My regular readers will quickly point out which more recent developments Craddock, who is a surgery fellow at UCL (of all places!) neglected to discuss, be it out of naivety, ignorance or whatever other reasons.

This is in my view the only chapter where the book disappoints.

The skill is rediscovered in the 16th century Europe, and the book proceeds through attempts at revitalising by blood transfusion, the horrid practice of teeth transplants, and more or less ends with the famous (or rather infamous) heart transplant by Christiaan Bernard, to rather uncritically discuss the futuristic promises of transplant surgery, like 3D bioprinting and decellurisation. His newly published book debut “ Spare Parts” brings us the history of body parts transplants, which began much earlier than we would expect, already in the Ancient India, with autologous skin transplants to reconstitute a lost nose. Paul Craddock is a British science historian.

Spare Parts by Paul Craddock