It sounds like the plot from a 1950s B-movie, but Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero’s desire is sincere: He wants to perform the first human head transplant. Canavero pitched the idea to potential donors and scientists at a conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopedic Surgeons in Annapolis, Maryland, Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.

And it was at the conference that Canavero, who heads the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, met his first volunteer: Russian-born Valery Spiridonov, 30, who has a progressive and incurable wasting disease called Werdnig-Hoffmann disease.

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