Book review of Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul by Brandy Schillace

White’s unorthodox quest made national news several times over the course of his long career, but in “Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher,” Brandy Schillace finally gives it the thoughtful book-length treatment it deserves. I trust it won’t be a spoiler to reveal that White died in 2010 without ever getting a chance to perform his much-desired head transplant — on humans, at least. But he did come remarkably close, at one point finding both a willing human volunteer (a quadriplegic with failing organs) and a medical establishment (Russia’s) flexible or reckless enough to fast-track the surgery without endless review board approvals. In fact, were it not for its exorbitant cost, the “White Operation” (as the good doctor himself rather immodestly dubbed the procedure) might actually have gone forward.

The idea of transplanting human parts was hardly new even when White first came up with his wholesale version in the 1950s. Surgeons in Europe had been doing serious work on transplants since the late 19th century, perfecting techniques of integrating new limbs and organs into the bodies of various lab animals. But all of these surgeries had ended in failure, with the recipient’s body interpreting the foreign tissue as a threat and creating a “destroying agent” to eliminate it. By the 1950s, this rejection issue led many to believe that human transplant surgery was hopeless, something that could succeed only in special circumstances (like those of Murray’s 1954 kidney procedure, where rejection did not occur because the patients were genetically identical twins).

Notwithstanding this stubborn obstacle, surgeons continued experimenting with transplants, setting off a kind of Cold War competition similar to the space race ignited by the Sputnik launch. A Russian physiologist named Vladimir Demikhov — who operated without benefit of an MD or a PhD — gave the Soviets an early lead in this “inner space race.” Film footage that leaked to the West in 1958 showed Demikhov ostensibly splicing together a mastiff and a much smaller dog to create a composite animal with eight legs and two fully functional heads. (Schillace, always alert to the queasy but alluring strangeness of her material, playfully notes that this “canine jigsaw” was named Cerberus, “after the three-headed hound of Hades.”)

Not to be outdone, White, practicing now at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, began conducting equally macabre experiments on primates. After perfecting the means by which a monkey’s brain could be chilled, drastically reducing its need for oxygen, he performed experimental surgeries in which one animal’s brain was removed from its body and attached to the circulatory system of a second. Ultimately, in March 1970, he was able to perform a true White Operation — a grueling 18-hour procedure in which he moved an entire head from Monkey A onto the decapitated body of Monkey B. The results were promising, if grotesque: The hybrid creature, though paralyzed from the neck down, lived for nine days before rejection set in.

It would take the development of immunosuppressant drugs to ultimately solve the rejection problem and make transplants an almost routine procedure. But although the technical hurdles to White’s dream were being overcome, the moral impediments — not least the cruelty of causing so much animal suffering in the name of medical research — were another matter. White, as a devout Catholic who believed that nonhuman animals lacked an immortal soul, was firmly convinced that his ends justified his means and that his lab monkeys died for the greater good of saving human lives. Not everyone agreed, and throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the surgeon found himself engaged in some high-profile debates with the likes of Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk.

Even more intriguing, however, are the philosophical issues raised by White’s work, and Schillace’s book is most fascinating when discussing how he did and didn’t address them. Moving a brain — and the consciousness that goes with it — from one body to another brings up fundamental questions about our notions of the self, the definition of death and even the ethics of immortality. “Could it really be ‘okay,’ ” as Schillace pithily asks, “to take off someone’s head?”

White, a man once characterized as “supremely untroubled by the implications of his work,” never had any doubt that it was. But as advances in medical technology make a brain transplant increasingly feasible, the issue becomes more urgent. As this spirited and breezily provocative book makes clear, we’ll have to grapple with the implications of a human White Operation much sooner than we think.

A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul

Simon & Schuster.
303 pp. $27