World’s first head transplant volunteer could experience something “worse than death”

For the first time in history a 30-year-old Russian man will become the live guinea pig for human head transplant operation. Valery Spiridonov announced that he will become the subject of the first human head transplant ever performed.  He said that he had himself volunteered to have his head removed and installed on another person’s body.

If you think this is some kind of joke, no we are serious.  Earlier this year, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, and said he planned to launch the project at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in the US in June, where he will invite other researchers to join him in his head transplant dream.

Now with Spiridonov volunteering to be a live guinea pig for Canavero, his head transplant dream could be a success or unluckily for Spiridonov fail.  Christopher Hootan at The Independent says is predicted to be a 36-hour operation requiring the assistance of 150 doctors and nurses.

Hootan in his report dug into the mysteries of head transplant.

“A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly declining health, Spiridonov is willing to take a punt on this very experimental surgery and you can’t really blame him, but while he is prepared for the possibility that the body will reject his head and he will die, his fate could be considerably worse than death,” says Hootan.

Another eminent personality Dr Hunt Batjer who is the president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, stated that, “I would not wish this on anyone. I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death.”