According to the cover story of the latest issue of science magazine New Scientist, an  Italian doctor, Sergio Canavero  of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group is going to set in motion the first attempt to transplant a human head at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons later this year.

Canavero believes that such a surgery could benefit those with degenerative conditions such as motor neuron disease and those whose bodies are wracked by cancer. He believes that the first such surgery, if it goes ahead, could take place as soon as 2017, once the most pressing technical issues are sorted out. Ethical issues aside, and there are several ethical issues involved, such a surgery would be considered one of the final frontiers for medicine.

Transplant surgeries have been taking place for under a century, and until now the most advanced transplant has been a face transplant. The first partial face transplant took place in 2005 and since 2010 there have been a few examples of full face transplants on individuals whose faces were disfigured in accidents taking on a new face, including tear-ducts and eyelids. This procedure was first theorized in the Hollywood movie Face/Off.

However, a full head transplant still remains in the realm of science fiction. Interestingly, scientists in the Soviet Union had attempted head transplant procedures with dogs as early as the 1950’s, although the animals did not survive long.

The New Scientist article notes that the first ‘successful’ head transplant took place in Cleveland in the United States in 1970 when a team led by Robert White transplanted the head of one monkey to the body of another. However, the spinal cords were not fused and the monkey could not move and only breathe with artificial assistance.

However, as Canavero notes, many of the surgical procedures have progressed since then and there is the distinct possibility of fusing the spinal cords of two different individuals together with polyethylene glycol which encourages nerve tissues to merge. He also says that both the head and body would be cooled to a very low temperature so as to reduce the possibility of tissue damage and that the person onto whose body the head is transplanted would be kept in a coma for a few weeks.

The debate however remains. While organs have been transplanted for a few decades now, in the case of a head transplant would it be one person or twoIJ Can an older man’s head be transplanted on to a younger man’s bodyIJ These ethical questions are wracking doctors, however many of them also believe that Canavero is unduly optimistic of the time-frame. But, as Canavero admits in the article, his main idea is to get people talking about the procedure. The ethics of such a procedure can be dealt with after the science is sorted out.