Quoted to resemble something from ’Frankenstein’, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero planned to carry out the first human head transplant in 2019. He is quoted to have said ‘The chances of this working are 90%. Of course, there is a marginal risk. I cannot deny that’.
Canavero had to pioneer his surgery in China due to being shunned by the western medical world due to being extremely unethical and to the lack of supporting research. The inspiration for Canavero came from Robert White who successfully transplanted monkey heads in the 1970s, however, his patients were already deceased prior to the operation.
Valery Spiridonov nominated himself to be the recipient of a new body in this pioneering surgery. Spiridonov suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease which destroys muscles and affects the central nervous system. Canavero would attempt to fuse Spiridonov’s head onto the spinal cord of another body. At the time, Spiridonov was keen on the procedure, making public claims about his trust in Canavero.
Then, all went quiet. By 2019, Spiridonov had pulled out of the surgery due to falling in love with a model and supposedly fathering a child (which is highly unlikely due to his condition). Was this a cover-up story to hide Canavero’s embarrassment about not being able to perform the surgery? Very little information regarding these plans has been published since 2019.
Organ transplants, such as kidneys were once considered to be impossible, so will we see this happen in our lifetime?
Dissect real organs at one of The Post Mortem Live shows!
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