They discovered that if you cool the head to 15 °C before reattaching the blood supply you can avoid brain damage. Canavero himself experimented with severing the spines of mice and then reattaching them with success. Xiaoping Ren, one of the researchers at Harbin Medical University, claims he and his team have performed experiments on human cadavers in preparation for carrying out the surgery on a living person. Canavero has since sought funds to perform a head transplant on 31-year-old Russian, Valery Spriridonov, who has a genetic muscle-wasting disease. He even approached Mark Zuckerberg to finance the surgery. It hasn't happened yet.
