This week, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, announced that he will become the subject of the first human head transplant ever performed, saying he volunteers to have his head removed and installed on another person’s body.
If this sounds like some kind of sick joke, we’re right there with you, but unfortunately, this is all too real. Earlier this year, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, and said he planned to launch the project at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in the US in June, where he will invite other researchers to join him in his head transplant dream.
At the time, it sounded completely outlandish - and it still is - but the difference now is that Canavero actually has a living, breathing volunteer willing to be the guinea pig for what Christopher Hootan at The Independent says is predicted to be a 36-hour operation requiring the assistance of 150 doctors and nurses. You can read about the procedure here.
Hootan brings home what’s really at stake for Spiridonov - it’s not just death he has to worry about:
"A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly declining health, Spiridonov is willing to take a punt on this very experimental surgery and you can't really blame -READ MORE-http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-head-transplant-volunteer-could-experience-something-worse-than-death
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