Valery Spiridonov, a 31-year-old Russian man who has a degenerative muscle condition known as Werdnig-Hoffman, is set to become the first person ever to undergo a human head transplant.
Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, is planning to perform the first-ever head transplant in December 2017.
He will put the head of wheelchair-bound Spiridonov on an entirely new healthy body.
Unfortunately, the disease typically causes the body to deteriorate to the point of death.
Spiridonov, a computer scientist, says he sees the head transplant as his one shot to have a new healthy body. Canevero said that he and his team were now in need of a donor body from a brain-dead man and nearly $100 million in funding.
The Italian doctor predicts that there is a "90 percent plus" chance of success, but other doctors are not so optimistic. In fact, many others have criticized the procedure as 'ethically questionable' and 'bad science', reported the Chicago Tribune.
"We are one step closer to extend life indefinitely because when I will be able to give a new body to an 80-year-old they could live for other 40 years".
Also dubbed Dr. Frankenstein, Canavero had first proposed the idea of transplanting a head onto someone else's body in 2013.
Canavero's idea is based on a controversial operation led by his new teammate Dr. Xiaoping Ren, who along with other Chinese surgeons, transplanted a monkey's head successfully.
Animal experiments in the 1970s in America saw Robert White transplant heads on monkeys, but he was unable to restore spinal function and the monkey who received the transplant died 9 days later.
