A RUSSIAN man who has a debilitating illness is set to become the first person to undergo a head transplant next December.

Valery Spiridonov, 30, suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, a rare form of spinal muscular atrophy.

4 Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero hopes to operate on Valery Spiridonov in December 2017 Credit: EPA

Italian surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero, who will carry out the £14 million experimental transplant, is likely to take 36-hours and will involve over 150 doctors and nurses.

The controversial operation will involve cooling his head to around 12 degrees Celsius, cutting it from his body and connecting it to the donated body of a brain-dead person.

After the surgery, Valery will be kept in a medically-induced coma for three to four weeks while doctors stimulate his spinal cord nerves to reconnect and start functioning.

Valery said the doctor dubbed Dr Frankenstein, will reveal more details about the op next month.

He told MailOnline: “If you want something to be done, you need to participate in it. I do understand the risks. There are many.

“We can’t even imagine what exactly can go wrong. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t live long enough to see it happen to someone else.”

4 Dr Sergio Canavero says human head transplant will happen by end of 2017

But surgeons believe the opinion-dividing procedure could cause Valery to go insane or die.

"I would not wish this on anyone," said Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons.

"I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death."

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Arthur Caplan, director of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre described Dr Canavero as "nuts".

He believes that the bodies of head transplant patients "would end up being overwhelmed with different pathways and chemistry than they are used to and they’d go crazy”.

4 The controversial operation will involve cooling his head to around 12 degrees Celsius, cutting it from his body and connecting it to the donated body of a brain-dead person Credit: Getty Images

4 'I do understand the risks. There are many' Credit: Getty Images

But Dr Canavero hit back at the criticism saying Valery will not only live with his new body, but will be able to walk within a year of the operation.

He told New Scientist last year: "I would say we have plenty of data to go on.

"It's important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and we're working towards it."

The potentially ground-breaking treatment was performed on a monkey in 1970.

The animal only lived for eight days after the body rejected the new head, leaving the monkey unable to breath and move.