Head transplants within decade? 'It's actually not impossible'

The approach could be helpful for diseases such as muscular dystrophy or for amputees. Photo / 123RF

The world's first human head transplants may be just a decade away, a former NHS neurosurgeon says.

Bruce Mathew says, while working on a science fiction novel, Chrysalis, with Michael J Lee, he realised there was a plausible way to move the consciousness of one person to another body, and recent advancements in robotics, stem-cell transplants and nerve surgery make the prospect achievable within the next decade.

Prof Sergio Canavero is also working on the first head transplant, involving severing the head from the spinal column and reattaching it to a donor body.

But Mathew believes it would be more effective to take the whole head and spinal cord as a single entity, and replace it in a donor body.

"It's actually not impossible. It will take a number of advancements, but it will probably will happen in the next 10 years."

The approach would be useless for people with spinal cord injuries, but could be helpful for diseases such as muscular dystrophy or for amputees, and could one day be used to bring back people who have been cryogenically preserved.

In 2017, Prof Canavero announced he had performed a head transplant on a corpse, connecting the spine, nerves and blood vessels of two people. The 18-hour operation was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren, of Harbin Medical University, China, who the previous year had grafted a head onto the body of a monkey.