World’s first head transplant volunteer could experience something "worse than death” - Surgeon

Last week, 30-year-old Russian man, Valery Spiridonov, announced that he will become the subject of the first human head transplant ever performed. Val, who's paralyzed from waist down, says he wants his head removed from his non-functioning body and installed on another person’s able body.


He volunteered himself as a guinea pic after Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero said head transplant was possible and outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow. But now a top surgeon said Val will experience a death worse than death is he goes ahead with this...

"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.”

"I would not wish this on anyone," said Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons. "I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death."

Even if the transplant succeeds which is unlikely, several medical experts say the world does not even know it will do to Val's mind.

"There’s no telling what the transplant - and all the new connections and foreign chemicals that his head and brain will have to suddenly deal with - will do to Spiridonov’s psyche. It could result in a hitherto never experienced level and quality of insanity". - the surgeon said