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Canavero’s collaborators in the ethically dubious — and, to some, morally repugnant — head-grafting venture include Xiaoping Ren, of Harbin University in China. Canavero moved his research to China after his home university in Turin rescinded his contract.

Photo by Yuri Kadobnov / AFP / Getty Images

In an interview with the National Post in 2016, Canavero said Spiridonov was “absolutely committed” to surgery. “Here you have a patient who is dying, dying, dying every single day. What is going to happen if I do nothing?”

Now his former Russian patient says plans have changed.

“I’ve got my own things to do,” Spiridonov said. “In my life appeared a woman who I fell in love with.”

Canavero reports he has moved HEAVEN out of China and that the research is now unfolding elsewhere (he won’t say where) and Ren, for his part, insists all he really wants to do is fix damaged spinal cords, and not necessarily a full head/body transplant.

“Depending on the medical communities in the world, if we get permission in the future, of course I am still interested to do HT (head transplant) anywhere in the globe,” Ren said in an email to the Post Tuesday.

Photo by Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

For now, his focus is on testing a special “fusogen,” a waxy, glue-like substance the researchers claim to have used to help monkeys and dogs with severed spinal cords walk again by cutting out the most damaged portions and reconnecting the two fresh ends.

Canavero said through an assistant on Tuesday that Spiridonov was never a candidate for a body swap in China, “for obvious cosmetic reasons.”