Issues that have come to surface with the experimental procedure done on animals, was the inability to remove their spinal cords to a new body. As a result, this left them paralyzed. Dr. Canavero states that advances in connecting spinal cords which are cut surgically, means doing such a transplants should be technically possible in humans.
“The greatest technical hurdle to [a head transplant] is of course the reconnection of the donor’s (D)’s and recipients (R)’s spinal cords. It is my contention that the technology only now exists for such linkage…. [S]everal up to now hopeless medical connections might benefit from such a procedure,” Canavero wrote down in his paper.

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In the operating room, two patients would have their heads taken off and cooled at a temperature between 12 and 15 degrees Celsius. Doctors would have to remove the heads at the same time, and reattach them onto the opposite body within one hour. The body receiving the new head must also be cooled and cardiac arrest must be brought onto the patient.
After the head is finally connected on, the heart can be put back in motion along with other vital operations within the body. Connecting the spinal cord from the head of one species to another has never been tried, therefore Dr. Canavero’s paper can be viewed as speculation. Still, the cutting and reconnecting of spinal cords from the same creature has had some success in the past.
Should this procedure ever be implemented on humans in the future, paraplegics with specific kinds of injuries may in theory be able to regain control of their movements in their donor body. Patients suffering with muscular dystrophy could possibly benefit from such an operation. Besides technical problems which still need sorting out, receiving a head transplant would be quite costly. Dr. Canavero believes the price of such a risky operation would cost 13 million dollars.
QZ.com