Pioneer Head Transplant To Happen In 2 Years: Russian Computer Scientist to Donate His Living Head

Your head is married to your body, but here is a strange divorce will take place for the first time.

A mindblowing surgery to transplant one human head onto another body is going to happen soon. The volunteer for the amazing surgery will be a Russian man with a "rare genetic muscle-wasting disorder"., while the surgery will be performed by a team of doctors led by Italian surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero.

"I'm very interested in technology, and anything progressive that might change people's lives for the better," Valery Spiridonov from the Russian city of Vladimir, told RT.

The 30-year-old qualified computer scientist, works for an IT firm.

While his illness is progressively deteriorating, he explained that patients of Werdnig-Hoffman disorder that "wastes muscles" never last beyond 20 years. Hence volunteering for the surgery would not only help science but also prolong his life.

"Doing this isn't only an excellent opportunity for me, but will also create a scientific basis for future generations, no matter what the actual outcome of the surgery is," he said.

The horror is not only that Spiridonov's may die, but will have to experience and absorb a number of chemical connections. It "could result in a hitherto never experienced level and quality of insanity", according to theindependent.

Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, who described Dr Canavero as "nuts", believes that the bodies of head transplant patients "would end up being overwhelmed with different pathways and chemistry than they are used to and they'd go crazy."

The surgery will be performed by the well-known Italian surgeon, Sergio Canavero, who considers it to be as good as "space exploration".

"Russia sent Yury Gagarin into space with fair chances of dying. America sent Neil Armstrong to the moon with fair chances of dying. And the chances here are much, much better," Canavero told RT.

At an expense of over $11 million, the surgery is expected to last 36 hours.

First, the patient's brain temperature has to be brought down to 10-15 degrees Celsius in order to increase the time taken by the cells "survive without oxygen".

Next, the body will be removed from another "brain-dead but otherwise healthy donor".

After cutting the body out with a scalpel used for the spinal cord, a special biological glue will be used to connect the head to the new body.

Once the operation is successful, the patient will slip into a coma for a month so that no movement takes place. He will also be subject to immunosuppressants so that the body can reject its head. Many medics oppose the procedure, with one Californian doctor calling it "too overwhelming a project to succeed," while others say that it is "too outlandish to consider" and simply "crazy."

Canavero has named his operation as HEAVEN, an acronym for head anastomosis venture. Anastomosis involves the surgical connecting of two parts.

Body transplants and organ replacements go back to the first cornea transplant in 1905. In 1967, a patient in South Africa received a new heart. There were other operations to replace limbs in 1998 and a total face transplant in 2010.