The Story of the First Human Head Transplant Won't Die (theoutline.com)

Stories about the first human head transplant operation, supposedly coming in December 2017, are circulating again. From a report on the Outline: But despite what you might have read or seen, humanity is not much closer to transplanting a human head to a new body than we were last year. Sorry to disappoint anyone looking to get their head transplanted. The story is based on the work of one man: Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero. Canavero started making headlines in 2013 with ambitious claims about the process he designed for a transplant of a human head -- as in, moving a healthy human head from a subject with an unhealthy body to an otherwise-healthy, brain-dead donor body. Canavero's claims have been alternately regarded as sensationalist, spurious, and ethically murky. Since then, the doctor has periodically resurfaced in the news. Once, when he found a willing patient in Valery Spiridonov, a Russian man with spinal muscular atrophy in the form of Werdnig-Hoffmann disease; other times when he published papers, including two proof-of-principle studies last year as well as articles reviewing preliminary work on animals relating to his proposed procedure. Though published in the internet-only journal Surgical Neurology International, an important distinction here is that none of these actually involve a successful full transplant of any kind despite his claim to have successfully transplanted a monkey's head. The papers addressing work with animals are, broadly speaking, about treating spinal cord injuries and issues.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Brain-computer interfaces are superior, cheaper, safer, more reliable and offer more flexibility. Case Western literally just published a paper showing a brain-computer interface allowing a quadriplegic arm mobility using his thoughts. (Youtube video in the article too). A head transplant would have to be done within an hour without immune response issues and all of these operations he's done on animals they end up with mobility issues and die after a few days to weeks. Only attractive option for it would be sci-fi live forever scenarios but even then the brain still ages so it's impractical at best.