re: Q&A with the First Human Set to Get a Head Transplant

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Won't he be paralyzed even if it does work? Or have they figured out a way to repair the spinal chord after they attach the head? If so, why can't that work on paralyzed people?

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Next comes the most critical step of all. Under an operating microscope, doctors will cleanly chop through both spinal cords—with a $200,000 diamond nanoblade, so thin that it is measured in angstroms, provided by the University of Texas.

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The lengths of the transected spinal cord stumps will be adjusted so they’re even, and the myelinated axons, the spaghetti-like parts of nerve cells, will be fused using a special type of glue made of polyethylene glycol, an inorganic polymer that Canavero says is the procedure’s true magical elixir. In this way, spinal cord function will be established by enabling the cytoplasm of adjacent cells to mix together.

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Despite the thoroughness of the presentation at the Annapolis, Maryland, conference, Canavero and Spiridonov faced vitriol and doubt. Spiridonov fielded a question about the ethics of this surgery by asking if anyone would like to be in his shoes: needing assistance with defecation and urination and living a life without sex. A hush fell over the audience. The Russian said he would rather risk death in this experimental surgery to achieve a higher quality of life than suffer the burdens of his current existence. “If he is going to die,” Canavero said later, “he is the only one who can decide.”

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