An Italian surgeon claims he will be able to perform the first head transplant – in which patient’s head would be glued onto a donor body – in only two years time.
Dr. Sergio Canavero, a member of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes the technique could save the lives of people riddled with cancer or whose nerves and muscles have wasted away, the New Scientist magazine reported.
An operation was carried out by Dr. Robert J. White , along with 18 various specialist, on a monkey with a limited degree of success in 1970. The surgeons then did not join the spinal cord so the animal could not move and it lived only nine days until the head was rejected by the body’s immune system.
However Dr. Canavero said: “I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible.