Surgeon Develops (Possible) Method For Transplanting Human Heads

The idea of transplanting a person's head onto another person's body is nothing new, and for those with catastrophically damaged bodies, the prospect is likely an exciting one (and, you know, it's creepy, too). Such ideas have been, more or less, left to the realm of fiction writing, but one scientist is hoping to change that in the next couple years. His name is Sergio Canavero, he is the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group's director over in Italy, and he has developed a new method for living head transplants that just might work.

The process involves, of course, a person willing to have their head transplanted and a healthy donor body. Both would have to be medically cooled down, and then the necks would be opened in order to join the biggest arteries together with tubes.

The big part, then, would be severing the spinal cord (this is where things get especially tricky) and joining it together with the donor body. The goal, obviously, would be for the donor body to be fully functional.

The key, it seems, would be injecting the severed portions of the spinal cord with polyethylene glycol for hours, causing them to (hopefully) start to fuse together. Electrical stimulation would be used to make the nerve connections more solid, all the while the patient would be in a coma (with their new body stitched fully on, of course).

There might be a need for immunosuppressants (does the head reject the body, or the body reject the head?), but otherwise if it is successful two people will become one in an entirely macabre way. It would take a lot of physiotherapy to get the body up and running, so to speak — but this is all speculation at this point. As of now, the procedure has never been accomplished.

SOURCE: CNET