Kilburn TV Acquires Global Rights For Human Head Transplant Docuseries

Kilburn Television, the TV production arm of Kilburn Media, has acquired global rights to develop and produce a docuseries that will chronicle the first human head transplant surgery, to be performed later this year.

The docuseries will take an in-depth look at the scientific, ethical, human and religious issues that follow Dr. Sergio Canavero and an international team of doctors and scientists as they prepare for and execute the most controversial surgery of all time.

Canavero outlined his plans for the procedure in a 2013 paper in Surgical Neurology International.

Canavero and his team remain confident that experimental results on mice, dogs, monkeys and cadavers will translate to a live human head transplant. But critics say that the transected spinal cord is unrecoverable and thus a human head transplant is impossible. Canavero plans to prove them wrong following the successful procedures he performed on rodents and dogs.

“When my team first pitched me this project, I think I almost threw all of them out of my office,” said Kilburn’s Mark Manuel. “However, as we researched more, I unbelievably realized that this is indeed real. This is a complex, multi-layered subject matter that deals with questions around science, advancement of medical procedures, ethics, religion, life-expectancy and so much more. Dr. Canavero is a fascinating subject matter, regardless of where you stand in this debate.”

Aaron Kaufman and Tina Gazzerro will executive produce the project.

Canavero is the former director for the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group and developed the GEMINI protocol, the scientific spinal cord fusion protocol for the first human head transplantation. Before that, Canavero worked as a neurosurgeon at the University Hospital Turin, Italy, for 22 years. He has written more than 140 scientific papers and published numerous scientific books including Central Pain Syndrome and Textbook of Cortical Brain Stimulation.

“It is important that we partner with a serious producer, one who takes this topic seriously,” Canavero added. “This surgery is a result of my life’s work, and I want the facts to be told and documented seriously and properly. We found that partner with Kilburn Television.”