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Italian surgeon looking for clinic in Germany for first-ever head transplant experiment

Sergio Canavero announced plans last year to carry out the surgery on disabled Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, suffering from genetic muscular atrophy and confined to a wheelchair for life

© Yuri Smityuk/TASS, Archive

ROME, June 8. /TASS/. Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero is looking for a clinic in Germany to carry out history's first-ever head transplant surgery, he told TASS on Wednesday.

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Canavero announced plans last year to carry out the surgery on disabled Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov, suffering from genetic muscular atrophy and confined to a wheelchair for life.

"I began looking for a clinic in Germany to start the project’s implementation," Canavero said. "This is the only chance to save Valery."

He earlier said the $10 million surgery could be carried out in the United States or China - an attempt condemned as "reckless" by Academician Anzor Khubutia, director of Moscow's Sklifosovsky emergency hospital.

Domestic legislation does not allow head transplantation surgery to be conducted in Russia.

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.".

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