Can you transplant a head to another body?

On March 14th, 1970, Robert White

and his team carted two small monkeys into an operating room. The neurosurgeon lay on the verge

of an ambitious experiment, decades in the making,

which was bizarre, if not pulled straight

from his own fever dream. White’s objective? Connect the head of Monkey A

to the body of Monkey B, in what he considered

a whole-body transplant. White’s ultimate goal was to one day

perform this surgery on humans. While disturbing,

the idea of a body transplant raises ethical, biological,

and philosophical questions— on the nature of life

and the limits of science— that are still discussed today. But first, is it even medically possible? White's surgery faced several

technical hurdles. For one thing, it guaranteed paralysis as no doctor then— or now—

could reconnect a severed spinal cord. But White,

a practicing neurosurgeon, thought the surgery could be life-saving for his patients with spinal cord injuries

or progressive mobility diseases like ALS. These patients often face

multi-organ failures and paralysis, so with a body transplant, he hoped to save their lives by replacing

all of their organs at once. But paralysis wasn't the only challenge. Due to their high energy demands, brain cells require a constant supply

of oxygenated blood to survive. Yet the transplant surgery would likely

interrupt the brain’s oxygen flow for hours. But White had an idea. When the brain is cold, its metabolism slows down

and it relies less on oxygen. Experimenting on dogs and monkeys, White optimized a brain-cooling technique where the brain’s blood flow was

selectively chilled and halted, while the rest of the body’s blood

remained warm and circulated. Then, in 1964, White successfully cooled

the brain of a human patient with a life-threatening brain tumor

into “suspended animation” at 11°C. Whereas normally the surgical team

would have just 3 to 5 minutes to remove the tumor, with this new technique, they operated for over an hour

without causing damage. Brain cooling revolutionized

the field of neurosurgery and put White one step closer

to his body transplant goal. But this vision was fraught

with serious ethical concerns. What conditions would justify

such an experimental surgery, that could result in debilitating pain

and neurological damage? And how many animals would have to die

to prove it was possible? At the time, bioethics

was still an emerging field. Nevertheless, numerous critics, including

many in the scientific community, recognized the cruelty of White's research

and strongly opposed it. Yet White continued to gain approval

from agencies like the NIH. And by 1970, he was ready to attempt

a monkey body transplant. First Monkey A was installed

with temporary blood vessels— coils of plastic tubes that tethered

the head to the body. Plastic tube by plastic tube,

the team connected Body B to Head A, and then waited for the subject

to awake from anesthesia. The monkey did— alive, paralyzed,

and extremely distressed. According to the team, the monkey

could see, smell, hear, and even tried to bite off

one of the doctors’ fingers. White felt this proved that the operation

could work. The brain appeared to survive

a head transplant and, with high doses of drugs,

could live without immune rejection. But had White performed

a body transplant on Monkey A? Or was it a head transplant on Monkey B? The surgery raises questions

about the mind-body divide that have been debated for millennia. While modern neuroscience supports

the central role of the brain in building out our consciousness, discoveries about gut neurons

and the microbiome suggest that the answer

may be more complicated. Does part of the “self” reside

outside of the mind? The body and brain are interconnected

by circuits and signaling systems; so, what is lost by separating the two? As a neurosurgeon, White performed

more than 10,000 brain operations before retiring in 1998— but never the human head transplant

he dreamed of. Since then, several scientists have

expressed interest in picking up where White left off,

reviving unfinished debates. Even if a doctor could successfully

connect a patient’s head to a donor’s body, who of the two would emerge? And is extending a life

always worth the cost?