American neurosurgeon (1926?2010)
Robert Joseph White
(January 21, 1926 ? September 16, 2010) was an American
neurosurgeon
best known for his
head transplants
on living monkeys.
Biography
[
edit
]
White was raised in
Duluth, Minnesota
, by his mother and an aunt. His father was killed in combat while serving in the
Pacific theater
during
World War II
.
[1]
White stated in a 2009 Motherboard interview that his interest in the human brain started in
high school
when his
biology
teacher admired his dissection of a frog cranium and told White that he should become a brain surgeon.
[2]
White began his undergraduate studies at the
University of St. Thomas
before entering the
University of Minnesota Medical School
in 1949; he later transferred to
Harvard Medical School
in 1951, where he earned his medical degree
cum laude
in 1953.
[3]
White had ten children with his wife, Patricia Murray, a nurse he met at
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital
while completing his surgical internship and residency. A devout Roman Catholic, Dr. White was a member of the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences
. He attended mass regularly and prayed before performing surgeries.
[1]
Throughout his career, White performed over 10,000 surgical operations and authored more than 900 publications on clinical neurosurgery, medical ethics and health care.
[1]
He received
honorary doctorates
from
John Carroll University
(Doctor of Science, 1979),
Cleveland State University
(Doctor of Science, 1980),
Walsh University
(Doctor of Humane Letters, 1996) and the University of St. Thomas (Doctor of Sciences, 1998).
[4]
White received invitations worldwide to speak, lecture and share his medical expertise. He was a consultant to the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery in Moscow and was the only foreign member of both Russian and Ukrainian Academies of Medical Science. He lectured extensively in the U.S., Russia, China and Europe.
[3]
White also became an adviser to Pope John Paul II on medical ethics. He established the Vatican's Commission on Biomedical Ethics in 1981 after his appointment to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Under White's leadership, the Commission influenced the church's stance on brain death and in vitro fertilization.
[1]
[3]
He nicknamed himself Humble Bob.
[5]
: 4
White founded Metro's neurosurgery department. Many people know him for being the leading target for protesters. A PETA activist went as far as to call him "Dr. Butcher" and described his experiments as "epitomizing the crude, cruel
vivisection
industry."
[6]
For 40 years, White was a neurological surgery professor at
Case Western Reserve University
medical school, a well-liked teacher and an acclaimed surgeon.
[1]
[3]
He was one of the best known neurosurgeons in the United States, notably for his head transplant experiments on rhesus monkeys.
[
citation needed
]
White died at his home in Geneva, Ohio, on September 16, 2010, at age 84 after suffering from diabetes and
prostate cancer
.
[1]
Research
[
edit
]
In 1970, after a long series of preliminary experiments, White performed a
transplant
of one monkey head onto the body of another monkey. Because the surgery included severing the
spine
at the neck, the subjects were paralyzed from the neck down. After the surgery, because the cranial nerves within the brain were still intact and nourished by the circulatory system from the new body, the monkey could still hear, smell, taste, eat and follow objects with its eyes.
[7]
Ultimately, immune rejection caused the monkey to die after nine days.
[8]
Dr.
Jerry Silver
, an expert in regrowing severed nerves, called White's experiments on monkeys, "fairly barbaric."
[6]
During the 1990s, White planned to perform the same operation on humans and practiced on corpses at a mortuary. He hoped he could do head transplant surgery on the physicist
Stephen Hawking
and the actor
Christopher Reeve
.
[8]
The continuation of White's work in head transplantation research and application has been discussed recently in the neurosurgical literature by Dr. Canavero;
[9]
the feasibility of spinal cord reconstruction and cephalo-spinal linkage in humans received support in 2014 from a German study.
[10]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Segall, Grant (September 16, 2010).
"Dr. Robert J. White, famous neurosurgeon and ethicist, dies at 84"
.
The Plain Dealer
.
Cleveland.com
. Retrieved
February 4,
2011
.
- ^
Feinberg, David (April 2, 2009).
"Chilled Monkey Brains"
.
Motherboard
.
Vice Media
. Retrieved
February 24,
2024
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Robert J. White, MD, PhD ? Hall of Honor 2011 Inductee"
.
MetroHealth
. Archived from
the original
on May 2, 2014
. Retrieved
April 30,
2014
.
- ^
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Yearbook 2008
(PDF)
. Vatican City: The Holy See. 2008. p. 255?257.
OCLC
751144907
.
- ^
Schillace, Brandy (2021).
Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul
. New York:
Simon & Schuster
.
ISBN
9781982113827
.
- ^
a
b
Bennett, Carla (August 26, 1995).
"Letter to the editor: Cruel and Unneeded"
.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
.
The New York Times
. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. p. 18
. Retrieved
April 26,
2015
.
- ^
Mims, Christopher (July 1, 2013).
"First-Ever Human Head Transplant is now possible, says Neuroscientist"
.
Quartz
. Retrieved
May 1,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
McCrone, John (December 2003).
"Monkey Business"
.
Lancet Neurology
.
2
(12): 772.
doi
:
10.1016/S1474-4422(03)00596-9
.
PMID
14636785
.
S2CID
5254407
. Archived from
the original
on February 28, 2015
. Retrieved
January 20,
2015
.
(As reproduced at author's personal webpage)
- ^
Canavero, Sergio (June 13, 2013).
"HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI)"
.
Surg Neurol Int
.
4
(2): 335?42.
doi
:
10.4103/2152-7806.113444
.
PMC
3821155
.
PMID
24244881
.
- ^
Estrada, V; Brazda, N; Schmitz, C; Heller, S; Blazyca, H; Martini, R; Muller, HW (2014). "Long-lasting significant functional improvement in chronic severe spinal cord injury following scar resection and polyethylene glycol implantation".
Neurobiology of Disease
.
67
: 165?79.
doi
:
10.1016/j.nbd.2014.03.018
.
PMID
24713436
.
S2CID
22390960
.
Sources
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]