Sergio Canavero

Sergio Canavero (born 1964) is an Italian neurosurgeon known for his controversial claims about the near-term feasibility of head transplantation—the grafting of a head onto a new body—in humans. He made headlines in 2015 when he publicly announced that he would perform such a procedure on a human in two years' time. In 2017, Canavero and colleagues performed a rehearsal head transplantation procedure on two cadavers, and he announced his intention to "imminently" perform the operation on a live human patient paralyzed from the neck down.

Life and education Canavero grew up in Turin, northern Italy near France, to a poor family. He has described his upbringing as rough.

He enrolled for medicine at the University of Turin at age 18 and graduated. In the mid-1980s, he began to train as a functional neurosurgeon at the University Hospital in Turin before being employed at the same venue. He worked for 22 years as a neurosurgeon (including being the Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group) until his contract was terminated in February 2015 due to increased opposition to his work from multiple quarters.

After his termination from the University Hospital, he was inducted as an honorary professor by Harbin Medical University in Harbin, a city in the Chinese countryside, near Russia. He attracted media attention in 2015 after claiming to be very near towards the successful execution of a human head transplant and detailed out a rough version of the proposed surgical procedure. However, Spiridonov later cancelled his participation after getting married and having his first child.

After his termination of contract in 2015, he had collaborated with Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical University, who were already working on a similar focus. Regarding Canavero's work, Caplan wrote: "Head transplants are fake news. Those who promote such claims and who would subject any human being to unproven cruel surgery merit not headlines but only contempt and condemnation."