Now it takes some balls to undergo the world’s first successful penile transplant , but it really takes nerves of steel to volunteer to undergo the world’s first head transplant.

Meet Valery Spiridonov, a 30-year-old computer scientist from Russia, who suffers from a rare genetic Werdnig-Hoffman muscle wasting disease. Valery has placed his trust in the hands of Italian surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero, who has recently claimed that he has the ability to remove Valery’s head from his current body and attach it to a healthy one. This from the Independent:

Spiridonov says that he is willing to undergo the risky procedure to give himself a chance at living in a healthy body.

“Am I afraid? Yes, of course I am. But it is not just very scary, but also very interesting…But you have to understand that I don’t really have many choices,” he said. “If I don’t try this chance my fate will be very sad. With every year my state is getting worse.”

Dr Sergio Canavero has come under fire from many in the medical fraternity who have accused him of taking advantage of Valery’s predicament for personal gain. Here’s the Daily Mail:

…critics say Dr Canavero’s plans are ‘pure fantasy’. The Italian has been compared to the fictional gothic-horror character Dr Frankenstein.

And Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre, has described Dr Canavero as ‘nuts’.

Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, told CNN: ‘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.’

Now there is some kind of precedent here as a successful head transplant was performed on a monkey back in 1970, and more recently a similar success was achieved with a mouse. What exactly does this operation entail then? Back to the Independent:

The head transplant is set to work by taking the head off a person suffering from a wasting or degenerative disease, and transplanting it onto the body of someone who is braindead but still has a functioning body. It would be akin to the process of moving organs into a body — but would rely on the donor’s family giving away the entire body, rather than just parts of it.

Well I wish them both luck. Here’s hoping it’s a resounding success, although it could set off some serious squabbles should the likes of Ryan Gosling or Chris Hemsworth end up in a braindead state.

[sources:dailymail&independent]