A former vice-minister of health dismissed the possibility of clinical trials in China involving a human head transplant, adding that an experiment done in China had severely violated ethical rules.

"We will never allow such clinical trials to be carried out in China," Huang Jiefu, chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee and former vice-minister of health, told China Daily in an interview on Friday.

"(A live head transplant) is technically impossible, and violates Chinese laws and regulations on organ transplants," he said.