Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In Mary Shelley's, a mad scientist creates a monstrous creature with severed body parts. In certain film adaptations, a dismembered head is tacked onto the malformed body. Then, with the help of a lightning storm, a new life is born. From the first successful kidney transplant in 1954, modern organ transplantation has often been linked to the horrors of Frankenstein .

An animated video posted this week has a voice-over that sounds like a late-night TV ad, but the pitch is straight out of the far future. This is BrainBridge, the animated video claims--"the world's first revolutionary concept for a head transplant machine, which uses state-of-the-art robotics and artificial intelligence to conduct complete head and face transplantation." BrainBridge is not a real company--it's not incorporated anywhere. This video is better understood as the first public billboard for a hugely controversial scheme to defeat death that's recently been gaining attention among some life-extension proponents and entrepreneurs. If you don't like it, noise-canceling headphones can reduce the sounds in your environment.

The man who volunteered to be a human guinea pig by undertaking the world's first head transplant this year has admitted his dream will never happen. Severely handicapped Russian Valery Spiridonov, 31, now accepts his hopes of his head being grafted onto a new healthy body are over. Controversial pioneering neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero - dubbed Dr Frankenstein - has vowed to undertake the first such transplant in China with an as yet unnamed local patient undergoing the operation. Valery Spiridonov, 31, who suffers from a muscle-wasting disease and had volunteered to undergo the world's first head transplant, says the operation will not go ahead As preparation the Turin-based medic was recently part of a team that attached a new head to a rat. But Spiridonov - who worked with Professor Canavero for two years and became the human face of hopes for head transplant surgery - acknowledged he had now lost his hopes a new body free from disabilities.

The idea of bringing people back from the dead by transplanting their brains into donor bodies may sound like science fiction. But the bizarre vision could be a reality within three years, according to a controversial Italian surgeon. Professor Sergio Canavero is famed for his plans to carry out the first human head transplant next year, and says that he will then focus on brain transplants. Critics say Professor Canavero's plans are'pure fantasy'. The Italian has been compared to the fictional gothic-horror character Dr Frankenstein and Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, has described Dr Canavero as'nuts'.

A controversial neurosurgeon who wants to carry out the first human head transplant has outlined plans to conduct'Frankenstein' experiments to reanimate a human corpse to test his technique. Dr Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, and his collaborators believe they may be able to conduct the first human head transplant next year. They have outlined plans to test whether it is possible to reconnect the spinal cord of a head to another body with tests that will stimulate fresh human corpses with electrical pulses. However, the Russian man who has volunteered to have the first transplant has also revealed that his girlfriend is opposed to him having the operation. Dr Sergio Canavero (pictured) believes the first human head transplant will take place next year.

The terminally ill man who is set to become the world's first head transplant recipient says more details about his extraordinary surgery will be revealed next month. Valery Spiridonov, a computer scientist from Russia, is set to undergo the risky procedure next year. Today, the 31-year-old is wheelchair reliant due to a muscle-wasting disease, announced his neurosurgeon would explain how the plan was progressing in September. Mr Spiridonov says he is ready to put his trust in controversial surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero who claims he can cut off his head and attach it to a healthy body. Neither the exact date or location have been chosen yet, but the world first procedure is aimed to take place in December 2017.

China's'Doctor Frankenstein' has revealed he is building a team for the world's first full body transplant on a living human being and will operate'when we are ready'. In an interview with the New York Times, Dr Xiaoping Ren spoke about the details for his plan, which involves removing two heads from two bodies and connecting the donor body to the recipient's head. A metal plate would be inserted to stabilise the new neck, while the spinal cord nerve endings would be saturated in a gluelike substance to help regrowth. Earlier this year, Dr Ren shocked the world when it was revealed his team had carried out a successful head transplant on a monkey – and that it lived for 20 hours. Dr Xiaoping Ren has revealed he is building a team for the world's first head transplant on a live human being Although compared to Dr Frankenstein by China's own state media, Dr Ren, who assisted in the first hand transplant in the US in 1999, remains unapologetic in his ambition.