Someone has a horrific accident and winds up in the hospital, brain dead and on life support. Doctors approach the family about organ donation, but instead of saving as many as eight lives, the family is asked to donate the whole body to save just one individual. Perhaps a quadriplegic with a mind that outmatches their malfunctioning body. 
 
 As crazy as this sounds, to put an entire head on a new body, a human body, Italian physician Dr. Sergio Canavero says we are approaching HEAVEN (an acronym for head anastomosis venture; anastomosis is surgically connecting two parts). The pieces are coming together but there are still many hurdles to jump. 
 
 Canavero says he has part of the funding secured, although he says he can't yet disclose where the money is coming from as a condition of the funding. He's also taking the 2015 layman's approach with crowd funding and book sales. 
 
 He has identified Valery Spiridonov as the first patient. The 30-year-old Russian man suffers from a rare genetic disorder called Werdnig-Hoffman disease. Canavero says the man volunteered. The two men have talked via Skype but they have yet to meet in person and Canavero has not reviewed Spiridonov's medical records. 
 
 Canavero says he has a stack of emails and letters from people who want this procedure. Many of them are transsexuals who want a new body, he says. But he insists the first patients will be people who are suffering from a muscle wasting disease 
 
 Another big obstacle is the need for a partner. Canavero can't just do this in his own Frankenstein lab. He needs a major academic medical center to host this endeavor and he has his eyes set on the United States. He hopes to get a buy-in this summer when he presents his plan to the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons , or AANOS, at its annual conference in June. He's counting on getting the green light he needs for the first human whole head transplant to take place in 2017. 
 
 Nick Rebel, executive director of AANOS, says the group is not endorsing Canavero, it is simply giving him a platform to hear what he has to say. 
 
 If Canavero doesn't get the support he needs in the United States, he'll look to China and his timeline will slide by a year. 
 
 Once these pieces are in place, Canavero says he'll put together a staff of 150 nurses and doctors. Many of them, like the patient, are already identified because they've asked to be part of this team. 
 
 Then they'll need to practice for what is anticipated to be a 36-hour operation. "I say two years is the time needed for the team to reach perfect synchronization," Canavero speculates. 
 
 But what about the science? Is such an idea even plausible? He says he has research that supports it. 
 
 Canavero points to Dr. Robert White, who transplanted the head of one monkey to the body of another at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1970. The monkey died after eight days, because the body rejected the new head. Before ithe monkey died, it could not move because the spinal cord of the head and body were not connected. The monkey also was unable to breathe on its own. The paper in which Canavero outlined his procedure references a different 1971 experiment White conducted with six monkey heads, none of which survived more than 24 hours. But Canavero says advances in science and medicine since then eliminate the problems White faced. 
 
 Dr. Hunt Batjer, chairman of neurological surgery at UT Southwestern and president-elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, says White's research is not validation for a human head transplant. "[It's] a 45-year-old reference in a primate and there is no evidence that the spinal cord was anastomosed functionally," he says. Batjer further explains that it's a great leap to go from brain survival of the surgery to restoring body function, which White did not look at. 
 
 Canavero is confident in his writing and in conversation. He cites White's monkeys and even the success of German researchers who helped paralyzed rats walk, giving no pause to the fact that such research is more likely to go nowhere than to make it to human clinical trials. 
 
 He published his paper in the free, online, medical journal Surgical Neurology International in 2013 . He walks readers through a scenario, outlining the key points that will make this work, including cooling the spinal cord before severing it. Doing so with an ultra-sharp blade will avoid the damage experienced by spinal cord injury patients, he says. He'll use a "magic ingredient" as a sealant to fuse the spinal cord back together and offers a few options for what that ingredient could be. The nerves, having been color-coded when separated, will be carefully aligned and this will all be done very quickly because time is key. 
 
 An impossibility, according to Batjer. He conceded that the airway, the spine, the major veins and arteries, can all be put back together, but the spinal cord is the problem. He says the result would be the inability to move or breathe. 
 
 "I would not wish this on anyone, I would not allow anyone to do it to me, there are a lot of things worse than death," Batjer says. 
 
 The science isn't there to support this, says Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. He says it's nothing more than a big PR stunt, and calls Canavero "nuts." 
 
 Caplan says this has to be done in many animals before it's tried on humans. Caplan also points out that if Canavero can do this, he should first be helping paralyzed patients by fixing their spinal cords, before transplanting whole bodies. 
 
 As for the patients, Caplan says, "their bodies would end up being overwhelmed with different pathways and chemistry than they are used to and they'd go crazy." 
 
 In his paper, Canavero says identity issues could be a problem as the head gets used to its new body. He also says pain could be a problem. As far as immunosuppression, Canavero points to today's transplant successes as evidence this is not a problem. 
 
 Caplan isn't buying it. He's seen how difficult it is for his NYU colleagues who perform face transplants. The levels of anti-rejection medications required are so high they put patients at risk for cancer and kidney problems. He says it doesn't make sense that you'd poison a new body with immunosuppressant medications to make a head transplant work. 
 
 Another issue Caplan has seen with face transplant patients is they don't always get full function of their new organ. 
 
 "It's not like you can unscrew your head and put it on someone else," Caplan says. 
 
 Dr. Robert Ruff, the Veterans Affairs national director for neurology, calls it farfetched and farcical, not to mention unlikely to work. He says this is more like centuries away, not years. "It would be impossible to predict that far into the future," Ruff says. 
 
 Canavero insists, though, "We can already do this." ||||| Scientists have carried out a head transplant on a human corpse, the neurosurgeon behind the operation has announced. 
 
 At a press conference in Vienna, Austria, Sergio Canavero said his team was able to remove the head from one body and connect it to the body of another by fusing the spine, nerves and blood vessels. He said the next step will be to carry out the operation on a living person, The Telegraph reports. 
 
 "The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done. A full head swap between brain dead organ donors is the next stage,” he said. "And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.” 
 
 Canavero said a “high number” of people have volunteered to be his first head transplant patient. It is thought he will carry out the operation in China in December. 
 
 The Italian neurosurgeon did not present any evidence of his claims at the conference. Instead, he said a scientific paper with details of the procedure would be released in the “next few days.” 
 
 "For too long nature has dictated her rules to us,” he said. “We're born, we grow, we age and we die. For millions of years humans has evolved and 100 billion humans have died. That's genocide on a mass scale. We have entered an age where we will take our destiny back in our hands. It will change everything. It will change you at every level.” 
 
 Canavero said his team has managed to cut down the time of the operation to just 18 hours. "After several transplants, the first full rehearsal has taken place in China. The surgery lasted 18 hours. I mentioned in 2015 that it should take 36 hours, but the Chinese improved on that in a spectacular way, and the surgery was successful. 
 
 See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows 
 
 "The next step is a full head transplant on brain dead organ donors and the first human head transplant for medical reasons will take place imminently. The date will come from Xiaoping in the next few days." 
 
 Since announcing his plan, Canavero has attracted a barrage of criticism. Most experts agree that his plan is not plausible—with most pointing out that with current technology, spinal cord fusion is not possible. 
 
 There are also major ethical concerns regarding the legality of such a procedure, and a worry that the operation will fail but the head will remain alive. 
 
 Jerry Silver, a professor of neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, recently told Newsweek that technically the head could be attached to a respirator where it could remain alive for days in incredible pain. “Every muscle, the bones, everything has been severed,” he said. “Can you imagine the pain from all those cut things? That’s the worst. The head is going to wake up in pain.” 
 
 Canavero has remained defiant of his critics throughout, however. He told Newsweek that if the operation is a success—a likelihood he estimates to be around 90 percent—it would be a “tremendous revolution that you will not have seen for some time.” 
 
 “The surgery is long and tedious, but absolutely feasible,” he added. “One thing is certain. Spinal cord fusion is a reality and head transplants will happen.” ||||| Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero gestures as he speaks during a news conference in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 17. (Photo: EPA) 
 
 An Italian doctor announced Friday that he will soon perform the world’s first human head transplant in China because medical communities in the United States and Europe would not permit the controversial procedure. 
 
 "The Americans did not understand," Sergio Canavero told a news conference in Vienna. 
 
 Canavero said the Chinese government and Xiaoping Ren, a Chinese doctor partnering with him on the procedure, would confirm the surgery's date "within days" to signal its goal of becoming a world leader in all fields, including medicine. 
 
 "Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to restore China to greatness. He wants to make it the sole superpower in the world. I believe he is doing it," Canavero said. 
 
 In a phone interview with USA TODAY, Canavero decried the unwillingness of the U.S. or Europe to host the surgery. "No American medical institute or center would pursue this, and there is no will by the U.S. government to support it," he said. 
 
 Canavero would not divulge the identity of the Chinese donor or recipient. The donor will be the healthy body of a brain-dead patient matched for build with a recipient's disease-free head. 
 
 Canavero estimates the procedure will cost up to $100 million and involve several dozen surgeons and other specialists. 
 
 He will simultaneously sever the spinal cords of the donor and recipient with a diamond blade. To protect the recipient's brain from immediate death before it is attached to the body, it will be cooled to a state of deep hypothermia. 
 
 The recipient and donor will be in a sitting position to facilitate what's expected to be more than about 24 hours of laborious work to separate and then reconnect vertebral bones, jugular veins, the trachea, esophagus and other neck structures. Machines will help the recipient breathe, pumping blood through the body. The patient will be kept in a drug-induced coma for an unspecified recovery time. 
 
 Michael Sarr, a former surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the editor of the journal Surgery, said Canavero's procedure is radical. 
 
 Doctors "have always been taught that when you cut a nerve, the 'downstream side,' the part that takes a signal and conducts it to somewhere else, dies," he said. "The 'upstream side,' the part that generates the signal, dies back a little — a millimeter or two — and eventually regrows. As long as that 'downstream' channel is still there, it can regrow through that channel, but only for a length of about a foot." 
 
 This is why, he said, if you amputate your wrist and then re-implant it and line the nerves up well, you can recover function in your hand. But if your arm gets amputated at the shoulder, it won't be re-implanted because it will never lead to a functional hand. 
 
 "What Canavero will do differently is bathe the ends of the nerves in a solution that stabilizes the membranes and put them back together," Sarr said. "The nerves will be fused, but won't regrow. And he will do this not in the peripheral nerves such as you find in the arm, but in the spinal cord, where there's multiple types of nerve channels." 
 
 There has been some success using Canavero's proposed technique on mice and dogs. In one example, a dog walked after six weeks, albeit with an awkward gait. "Based on the classic thinking about how nerves regenerate it was unbelievable," Sarr said. 
 
 Canavero said his team has "rehearsed" his technique with human cadavers in China, but there are otherwise no known human trials. He said the 18-hour operation on two corpses showed it was possible to reconnect the spinal cord and blood vessels. Before the full transplant takes place, two brain-dead patients will undergo the surgery. 
 
 Most medical experts say it's a long shot, but even if the operation works the biggest obstacle may not be the science itself, but whether it should happen at all. 
 
 "There are too many risks at this point to go ahead with it," said Assya Pascalev, a biomedical ethicist at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "We don't have enough data with animal models, sufficient published and peer-reviewed results, and particularly data about morbidity and mortality on the animals that have had the procedure." 
 
 Pascalev said that any groundbreaking procedure is certain to face objections and skepticism, and requires a leap of faith. 
 
 "The first heart transplant, hand transplant, facial transplant: all were met with serious reservations," Pascalev said. "There are also regulatory concerns. China does not have the same ethical standards and requirements that the United States and Europe have." 
 
 She added that there were major unanswered questions about the recipient if the surgery succeeds, such as whether he or she would have legal rights to children produced by the new body. "It's not just about a head adjusting to a new body. We might be dealing with a whole new person." 
 
 Canavero dismissed these concerns. "Western bioethicists needed to stop patronizing the world," he said. He added that China's receptiveness to hosting the surgery reflected its determination to replace the U.S. as the world leader in all fields. 
 
 "Who sent America to the Moon? It was Wernher von Braun," he said, referring to the German immigrant who was an early rocket developer and space-exploration advocate for the U.S. 
 
 James Giordano, a professor of medicine and neurosciences at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, agreed with Pascalev that not enough rigorous study has been done to support a procedure with so many risks. 
 
 He said patients might be better served if Canavero focused on spinal reconstruction, not transplants. Yet he also gave him some credit for his pioneering work. 
 
 "He's run the ethical flag up the poles and said, 'Look, I'm not an ethicist, I'm a neurologist and this may be an avant-garde technique, I recognize there is a high possibility for failure, but this is the only way we can push the envelope and probe the cutting edge to determine what works, what doesn't and why.'" 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2ANIl5p ||||| The controversial neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero says his plan to perform a human head transplant is moving forward now that he’s successfully performed the experiment on mice and a monkey, reports Sam Wong at New Scientist. 
 
 “I would say we have plenty of data to go on,” Canavero told New Scientist. “It’s important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and we’re working towards it.” 
 
 Head Transplants And Other Ethical Dilemmas From 2015 
 
 Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, first raised eyebrows about the procedure as far back as 2013 when he first started considering it. Early last year he told New Scientist about the plan, and then last September, he announced he had a volunteer: Valery Spiridonov, 30, who has been diagnosed with a genetic muscle-wasting condition called Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. 
 
 The procedure Spiridonov would have to endure sounds horrifying. First, his body and the body of his donor would be cooled to a very low temperature. Next, the neck and spinal cord would be cut with an exceptionally sharp knife to reduce any tissue damage. 
 
 After being treated with a substance called polyethylene glycol, a chemical that preserves nerve cell membranes, Spiridonov’s head would then be fused to the donor body. 
 
 Firefighter Gets Face Transplant 
 
 Canavero said he would draw upon other techniques to promote recovery, such as stimulating the spinal cord and using a negative pressure device to create a vacuum that would encourage the nerves of the head to fuse to those in the donor spine. 
 
 During all of this, the patient would remain in a drug-induced coma for about four months until healing took place. 
 
 To show that the procedure could work, experimental work has been done on cadavers, mice and a monkey, Canavero told New Scientist. With the monkey, he said they cooled the head to -15 °C for the operation and that the monkey survived without neurological injury. It had to be euthanized 20 hours later for ethical reasons. 
 
 First Successful Penis Transplant Performed In S. Africa 
 
 So far, none of Canavero’s work has been documented in peer-reviewed journals, including his alleged work on mice and monkeys. New Scientist reports that Canavero is set to publish seven papers in the journals Surgery and CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics over the next few months, and although the reporters have seen unconfirmed images and video of mice and monkeys who’ve undergone the surgery, they’ve not been given advance access to the papers. 
 
 Announcing the research before it’s published and can be critiqued by other scientists is generally frowned up on scientific circles. It creates excitement before excitement is warranted, Thomas Cochrane, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School’s Centre for Bioethics told New Scientist. 
 
 Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University School of Medicine, said “When it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal, I’ll be interested. I think the rest of it is BS.” 
 
 Canavero, who plans to perform the surgery in 2017, said he’s pursuing this line of research to help people who are completely paralyzed. 
 
 via New Scientist ||||| Updated | Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has announced further details about the plan to carry out the world’s first head transplant surgery. In a turn of events, the operation will no longer be performed on Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man suffering from the muscle-wasting Werdnig-Hoffman's disease, with whom Canavero has been working for almost two years. 
 
 Instead, the operation will take place in China on a currently unselected Chinese national. A news release put out Thursday by OOOM, the media company handling Canavero’s press announced that Spiridonov, “who for a long period was considered for being the first transplant patient, will not be the first person whose head will receive a new body.” 
 
 It was unclear why Spiridonov was no longer involved. Georg Kindel, publisher & editor-in-chief of OOOM, tells Newsweek it was simply about where the surgery will be taking place. “Because the head transplant will be conducted in China it’s much easier to get a Chinese donor,” he says. “That’s the main reason. I’m not sure if Professor Canavero has talked to Valery in the meantime. I don’t know the reaction of Valery. However, if the head transplantation succeeds—and we all hope and are confident that it will succeed—then it will not be the last, so it will only be a question of time when Valery will get a new body.” 
 
 Canavero, in an interview with OOOM, said the first human head transplant will take place within 10 months. He did not specify a date for the surgery, but Kindel said the team is on track to carry it out at the end of the year: “They have a tight schedule but the team in China say they are ready to do it. Professor Canavero always said we will be ready at the end of 2017 and—if there is a strong power in China behind the project — it seems it definitely will be at the end of this year or the start of next year that the entire procedure will be conducted.” 
 
 At present, Canavero and Xiaoping Ren, of the Harbin Medical University in China, have presented little evidence to convince the scientific community their plan will be a success. Canavero previously has provided a brief outline of what they intend to do, but with relatively little detail of the steps involved. Research outlining experiments on animals have also failed to convince critics, many of whom say we are nowhere near having the technology required to undertake such a complex procedure. 
 
 In the press release, Canavero said they have several papers relating to head transplants that are currently under peer review and will appear in “renowned scientific medical journals”—although he did not specify which journals. “I can only disclose that there has been massive progress in medical experiments, which would have seemed impossible even as recently as a few months ago,” he said. “The milestones we have reached will undoubtedly revolutionize medicine.” 
 
 Asked about why Canavero and Ren are keeping their research such a closely guarded secret—something they have been criticized for in the past—Kindel said it is to do with the technologies they are developing: “Are these procedures that can be patented? If this is the case then it will be done,” he says. “It’s the same as with pharmaceutical companies. They conduct research for years and don’t publish anything, then at a certain stage they go out and inform the media and public.” 
 
 See all of the best photos of the week in these slideshows 
 
 Responding to criticism from other scientists, he added: “There are so-called experts who have no experience because they have never done this before. They say ‘no this will never happen.’ Canavero has just one goal—he says ‘I work on it. We have the scientists, the experts, the teams in the U.S., South Korea and China working it and when we are ready to inform the public, we will do it.’” 
 
 Several people working in the field have also criticized the scientists on the basis that if they have the technology to repair spinal cords—one of the key parts of the surgery—then they should be developing this to treat people who are paralyzed, instead of holding it back for a surgery many believe will not work. 
 
 “[Repairing the spinal cord] was part of the entire research for the head transplantation,” Kindel says. “At the beginning they were just trying their technique and thought, well maybe it works—but it does work. It was astonishing for the entire team. It’s just part of the entire process. And if it is the case they can help tetraplegics and paraplegics, then this is really a huge step forward in medicine.” 
 
 Kindel said he and the team know of no legal restrictions or regulations that would prevent them from carrying out the surgery. In China, surgeons are now waiting for journals to approve the studies they have submitted—after which point the findings will become public.“This is something that is completely new and could change medicine,” he says. “If this works—and all the studies seem to show it will work—then this is really a major step forward for medicine in general.” 
 
 Correction: This article previously referred to Michael Sarr, editor of the journal Surgery, as a neurosurgeon when he is a surgeon. The interviewee also referred to quotes previously made by Sarr which were incorrect. All references to Sarr have now been removed. ||||| In February, Medical News Today reported that an Italian surgeon is to announce updated plans to conduct the world's first human head transplant within the next 2 years. Now, a 30-year-old Russian man is set to become the first person to undergo the procedure. 
 
 
 
 The HEAVEN-GEMINI procedure - which is estimated to take 100 surgeons around 36 hours to complete - will involve spinal cord fusion. The HEAVEN-GEMINI procedure - which is estimated to take 100 surgeons around 36 hours to complete - will involve spinal cord fusion. 
 
 Dr. Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group (TANG) in Italy, first spoke of his plans to carry out the first human head transplantation in July 2013 - a project named HEAVEN-GEMINI. 
 
 At the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons' 39th Annual Conference in Annapolis, MD, in June, Dr. Canavero will present updated plans for the project, addressing some of the previously identified challenges that come with it. 
 
 Though researchers have seriously questioned the feasibility of Dr. Canavero's plans, it seems the first human head transplantation is a step closer to becoming a reality; Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old computer scientist from Vladimir, Russia, is the first person to volunteer for the procedure. 
 
 Spiridonov has Werdnig-Hoffman disease - a rare genetic muscle wasting condition, also referred to as type 1 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The condition is caused by the loss of motor neurons in the spinal cord and the brain region connected to the spinal cord. Individuals with the disease are unable to walk and are often unable to sit unaided. 
 
 Spiridonov was diagnosed with Werdnig-Hoffman disease at the age of 1 and told MailOnline that he volunteered for HEAVEN-GEMINI because he wants the chance of a new body before he dies. 
 
 '"I can hardly control my body now," he said. "I need help every day, every minute. I am now 30 years old, although people rarely live to more than 20 with this disease." 
 
 Donor body will be attached to recipient's head through spinal cord fusion 
 
 Dr. Canavero told CNN he has received an array of emails and letters from people asking to be considered for the procedure, many of which have been from transgender individuals seeking a new body. However, the surgeon says the first people to undergo the procedure will be those with muscle wasting conditions like Spiridonov. 
 
 The procedure - which is estimated to take 100 surgeons around 36 hours to complete - will involve spinal cord fusion (SCF). The head from a donor body will be removed using an "ultra-sharp blade" in order to limit the amount of damage the spinal cord sustains. 
 
 "The key to SCF is a sharp severance of the cords themselves," Dr. Canavero explains in a paper published earlier this year, "with its attendant minimal damage to both the axons in the white matter and the neurons in the gray laminae. This is a key point." 
 
 The spinal cord of the donor body will then be fused with the spinal cord of the recipient's head. Chemicals called polyethylene glycol or chitosan can be used to encourage SCF, according to Dr. Canavero. The muscles and blood supply will then be sutured. 
 
 The recipient will be kept in a coma for around 3-4 weeks, says Dr. Canavero, during which time the spinal cord will be subject to electrical stimulation via implanted electrodes in order to boost the new nerve connections. 
 
 The surgeon estimates that - with the help of physical therapy - the patient would be able to walk within 1 year. 
 
 Spiridonov admits he is worried about undergoing the procedure. "Am I afraid? Yes, of course I am," he told MailOnline. "But it is not just very scary, but also very interesting." 
 
 "You have to understand that I don't really have many choices," he added. "If I don't try this chance my fate will be very sad. With every year my state is getting worse." 
 
 Spiridonov talks more about his decision to participate in HEAVEN-GEMINI in the video below: 
 
 Dr. Canavero branded 'nuts' 
 
 Dr. Canavero has previously admitted there are two major challenges with HEAVEN-GEMINI: reconnecting the severed spinal cord, and stopping the immune system from rejecting the head. But he claims that recent animal studies have shown the procedure is "feasible." 
 
 Unsurprisingly, however, researchers worldwide are highly skeptical of the proposal. Talking to CNN, Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of medical ethics and NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, NY, even called Dr. Canavero "nuts." 
 
 Caplan said the procedure needs to be conducted many more times on animals before it is applied to humans, adding that if the technique is feasible then Dr. Canavero should be trying to help paralyzed patients before attempting whole body transplants. 
 
 And talking to New Scientist earlier this year, Harry Goldsmith, a clinical professor of neurosurgery at the University of California-Davis, said the project is so "overwhelming" that it is the chances of it going ahead are unlikely. 
 
 "I don't believe it will ever work," he added, "there are too many problems with the procedure. Trying to keep someone healthy in a coma for 4 weeks - it's not going to happen." 
 
 Spiridonov says he is well aware of the risks, though he is still willing to take a chance on Dr. Canavero. 
 
 "He's a very experienced neurosurgeon and has conducted many serious operations. Of course he has never done anything like this and we have to think carefully through all the possible risks," he told MailOnline, but adds that "if you want something to be done, you need to participate in it." 
 
 Though it not been confirmed when the procedure will be performed, Spiridonov says it could be as early as next year. Watch this space. 
 
 Latest update 
 
 In October 2015 we interviewed Dr. Sergio Canavero about his plan to perform the first human head transplant in December 2017 - a procedure he claims will take around 150 surgeons and nurses approximately 36 hours to complete and will cost around $11 million. You can read the full interview here. ||||| Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero grabbed the world’s attention this past winter when he announced his plans to perform the first human head transplant. Many doubted that such an outrageous procedure would ever see the light of day. Now, Canavero has a date on the books. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Thirty-year-old Russian computer scientist Valery Spiridonov is set to become the world’s first head transplant patient in December 2017. Spiridonov suffers from a rare genetic muscle-wasting condition known as Werdnig-Hoffmann disease. There’s currently no known treatment. 
 
 As you might not want to imagine, the procedure will be filled with challenges and uncertainties. There’s the hair-raising possibility that the head will reject the body or vice versa. The spinal cord might not fuse properly. Even if everything goes well, there’s no telling whether Spiridonov’s mental capacities or personality will remain the same. He’s embarking on totally uncharted medical territory. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Then again, a successful human head transplant could open doors in terms of restoring independence to severely disabled people. And to Spiridonov the risks are worth it. 
 
 “When I realized that I could participate in something really big and important, I had no doubt left in my mind and started to work in this direction,” Spiridonov told the Central European News. “The only thing I feel is the sense of pleasant impatience, like I have been preparing for something important all my life and it is starting to happen.” 
 
 [Fox News] 
 
 Contact the author at maddie.stone@gizmodo.com or follow her on Twitter. 
 
 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Sponsored 
 
 Top image via Shutterstock
– The first step in what USA Today says would be an "audacious" therapy reportedly took place in China Friday: the world's first human head transplant, achieved with two corpses. And Sergio Canavero—the Italian doctor behind the alleged procedure, says he plans to do the same thing next on two brain-dead patients, followed by an "imminent" surgery with a living one, the Telegraph reports. Per Newsweek, Canavero described the procedure Friday at a Vienna press conference, explaining that his team had taken the head off one body and placed it on another, fusing the spine, blood vessels, and nerves. The procedure with a living patient is set to happen in China in December, mainly because the US and Europe refuse to host it. Medical experts say there haven't been enough studies or trials, and cite both ethical issues and the potential for "incredible pain." Mystery surrounds the living patient at the center of the storm, whose healthy head would be transferred to the disease-free body of a brain-dead patient—technically making this a "body transplant," not a head transplant, USA Today notes. That recipient was originally said to be 33-year-old Russian Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from a muscle-wasting disease. But an April release cited by Newsweek said a Chinese citizen would undergo the procedure, not Spiridonov, and the magazine on Friday quoted Canavero as saying a "high number" of people have volunteered. Canavero gives the procedure a 90% chance of success. Meanwhile, a Guardian columnist takes issue with Canavero's work. "The human body is not modular," writes Dean Burnett. "You can't swap bits around like you would Lego blocks." (Canavero, way back when this all started.)