Transplant pioneer is leaping ahead

File photo: Katy Hayes, a mother of three who lost her limbs to a flesh-eating disease, had someone else's arms and hands transplanted onto her body - the first procedure of its kind in the US in 2012. Now, surgeons are looking at full body transplants. AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Billy Smith II

File photo: Katy Hayes, a mother of three who lost her limbs to a flesh-eating disease, had someone else's arms and hands transplanted onto her body - the first procedure of its kind in the US in 2012. Now, surgeons are looking at full body transplants. AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Billy Smith II

Published Feb 27, 2015

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Italy - The world’s first full-body transplant – in which someone’s head would be sewn on to a donor body – could take place in just two years, according to a controversial surgeon.

Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, believes the technique could save the lives of people riddled with cancer or whose nerves and muscles have wasted away, New Scientist reported.

The operation was carried out on a monkey with a limited degree of success in 1970.

The surgeons did not join the spinal cord so the animal could not move and it lived only nine days until the head was rejected by the body’s immune system.

However,Canavero said: “I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible.

“If society doesn’t want it, I won’t do it.

“But if people don’t want it in the US or Europe, that doesn’t mean it won’t be done somewhere else.”

The Independent

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