The team in China is ready to roll," says Canavero, who worked as a neurosurgeon at Turin University Hospital in Italy until 2015. "All the preclinical and clinical studies have been conducted successfully." Much of this work will not be published, he says, but insists that what will be published "will be more than enough to show where China stands". The precise date of a transplant attempt depends on finding a donor of the right height, build and complexion, he says. "The problem now is only organizational."

Canavero calls his proposed procedure the head anastomosis venture, or HEAVEN. He says it would begin by cooling the donor body and recipient's head to delay tissue death. The heads would be detached and the donor body attached to the recipient's head. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) would help fuse the cords by encouraging the fat in adjoining cells to mesh together. Stimulation from implanted electrodes would help to strengthen nerve connections.

Nextbigfuture has covered the proposed head transplant procedure since 2013.