The procedure would be beneficial to humankind - and help those who are stricken with devastating disease. When we learn of the process, however, the first thing to pop into our heads is hunchbacked assistants and green- faced monsters. A human heads transplant is now possible within two short years, officials say. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, the Frankenstein- style procedure to graft a living person's head on to a donor body will soon be available.
The surgery is intended to help extend the lives of people who have suffered degeneration of the muscles and nerves or those who have advanced cancer.
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Canavero plans to announce the project at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in June. The doctor published a paper on the technique that he will use in the Surgical Neurology International journal this month.
In the procedure, the recipient's head and the donor body would be cooled at the start of the procedure to extend the time that cells can survive without oxygen.
Tissue around the neck would be dissected and major blood vessels would be joined using tiny tubes.
The spinal cords would be severed and the recipient's head moved on to the donor body. The ends of the spinal cord would then fuse together with a chemical called polyethylene glycol, which encourages fat within cell membranes to mesh.
The person would be put into a medically induced coma for around four weeks to prevent them moving while they heal.
Canavero said he would expect the patient to be able to move and feel their face when they awoke, they would speak with the same voice. They would be able to walk within a year.
"If society doesn't want it, I won't do it. But if people don't want it, in the U.S. or Europe, that doesn't mean it won't be done somewhere else.
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"I'm trying to go about this the right way, but before going to the moon, you want to make sure people will follow you."
The first successful head transplant - involving moving the head of one monkey on to another - was carried out in 1970 at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The monkey lived for nine days, but its immune system rejected the head.
