World’s First Head to Head transplant Surgery set for December

For years, Italian surgeon Dr. Sergio Canavero has been planning to attempt to perform the world’s first head transplant and proposed that it would take place in December 2017, garnering immense media attention and criticism.

In 2013, Dr. Canavero outlined his plans for the procedure in a paper published in Surgical Neurology International. “In 1970, the first cephalosomatic linkage was achieved in the monkey. However, the technology did not exist for reconnecting the spinal cord, and this line of research was no longer pursued,” he wrote.

Dr. Canavero proposed transplanting a head but included reconnecting it with the spinal cord in hopes of successfully transplant the head onto a different body. “Several human diseases without cure might benefit from the procedure.”

By June 2015, Dr. Canavero was recruiting surgeons to participate in the procedure, which will be conducted on Valery Spiridinov, a 31-year-old Russian man with Werdnig-Hoffman disease, a rare genetic condition that prevents his muscles from growing.

However, the Russian man who has volunteered to have the first transplant has also revealed that his girlfriend is opposed to him having the operation.

Chinese Surgeon Dr. Xiaoping Ren joined the planned procedure as Dr. Canavero’s assistant. With China most interested in the procedure, Spiridinov was allegedly replaced by a volunteer from China due to legal concerns. Dr. Canavero has also expressed interest in performing the procedure in the UK.

The choice of the UK is, in part, because of the huge amount of support that he has received from people in the country, Dr Canavero said.

Eighty surgeons from Russia, China and South Korea will be involved in the transplant attempt, which is estimated to take 36 hours and cost $10 million. The team is scheduled to introduce themselves and explain their plan in June 2017 at a conference in Baltimore, Md.