‘I did think I’d get involved in like

At 24, William Sikkema may hold the “linchpin” to what could become the most brazen experiment in the history of medicine.

The Langley, B.C., native, now a PhD graduate student at Rice University in Houston, Texas, has developed a substance dubbed Texas-PEG composed of graphene “nanoribbons” and a common polymer to help knit severed spinal cords.

In a recent experiment conducted at Konkuk University in Seoul, researchers severed the spinal cords of five female rats, and swabbed the two stumps with Sikkema’s solution. Four rats drowned in a freak lab flood but, two weeks after surgery, the surviving rat could walk without losing balance, stand on its hind limbs and use its front paws to feed itself pellets.

The recovery was “night and day” compared to the polymer that Sergio Canavero initially planned to use for the head transplant.

National Post spoke to Sikkema about how he feels about his role in what the maverick Italian brain surgeon is planning:

“I had read an article on Reddit (in January) about how Sergio was planning this head transplant, and he had this material called polyethylene glycol that did some (spinal) re-fusion.

“I emailed him, saying, ‘I have this idea. If you’re interested, I could write up a whole proposal and put you in contact with my prof, and we could talk about it more.’ He sent back a three-word email an hour later: “Yes. Do it.

“The hardest part of a human head transplant is reconnecting the spinal cord. And so you really need a solution that would fix that. So I think this will make it work. I think this is the linchpin, the last piece of the puzzle. Sergio has solved most of the pieces of the puzzle. But I think this will make it work.

“I’m actually a little concerned about the (head transplant). I’m a chemist; I’m not a biologist or a surgeon. I get my information from Sergio. But from other surgeons I’ve