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Head transplant volunteer wants Russian scientists to attend operation

Thirty-year-old programmer, suffering from genetic muscular atrophy and confined to a wheelchair for life, is a candidate for the $10 mln procedure planned by Italian neurosurgeon Canavero for 2017
Russia's computer scientist Valery Spiridonov Vladimir Smirnov/TASS
Russia's computer scientist Valery Spiridonov
© Vladimir Smirnov/TASS

VLADIMIR, June 25. /TASS/. Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, volunteering for history's first-ever head transplant surgery, said he hopes that Russian scientists will take part in the risky operation.

Thirty-year-old programmer Spiridonov, suffering from genetic muscular atrophy and confined to a wheelchair for life, is a candidate for the $10 million procedure planned by Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero for 2017.

"We believe that the technology of our scientists will be anyway useful for Canavero and other [transplantology] experts," he told TASS.

Canavero said earlier he was convinced that the operation involving some 150 medics and scientists will be successful.

However, Academician Anzor Khubutia, director of the Moscow-based Sklifosovsky emergency hospital, dismissed Canavero's plans as absolutely "reckless".

The idea of transplanting a donor’s head onto a body was first related by Russian science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev in his 1925 novel "Professor Dowell's Head."