I came to this book after having read others regarding this interesting subject.

The author covered the subject well starting from an initial kidney transplant up to Dr. Whites experimentations with monkey head/body transplants. Dr. White is an interesting character and I enjoyed learning more about his life.

I also appreciated the perspective regarding the development of these issues during the Cold War era with Russia and religious/ethical implications. Unfortunately, I tended to lose interest as the author spent far too much time regarding objections provided by animal rights activists. Sporadic references to racial discrimination were gratuitous- at times I felt the author was injecting her own liberal ideology into this work.

What could have been an outstanding work ended up being an OK one. ( )

Topic I didn’t know much about. Definitely a gross and disgusting concept of transplanting ahead. But I like how they tied it in how a lot of his preliminary work benefited healthcare in many other ways. ( )

What is the definition of "dead"? Can the brain be isolated? How do you quantify brain activity and being alive once the brain is outside of the body? Can you transplant a brain? Can the brain be "frozen" during surgery then revived? These questions are explored relentlessly by Dr Robert White, Dr. Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov and others, with the Soviet Union and U.S. relations of the 1960s looming in the background. Not just a Space Race, but a medical race as well. First time I certainly heard of it in the context of the Cold War!

Fair warning, many animals are sacrificed in the name of science in this book. White himself held Victor Frankenstein as a personal hero. Ideologically at least. "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death..." But they are addressed as "patients" and are sympathized with. Part of the story is the contest between science and animal rights, which resulted in the US Animal Welfare Act of 1966. Not perfect, but a start to proper regulation. However, as I told the author on Twitter, some of the surgical scenes, human or animal, made for some tense reading but I was glued to the page! This book is one of the most medically fascinating ones I've ever read. ( )

Content warning: This book contains detailed accounts of experiments on animals.

Mr. Humble and Doctor Butcher were two sides of the same coin. American neuroscientist Robert White considered himself a humble physician whose goal was to save human souls by developing innovative surgical techniques, namely the transplantation of heads onto new bodies. At the same time, though, his experiments on animals led to the newly formed PETA branding him Doctor Butcher, a man blithely unconcerned with animal welfare if it helped human welfare. This book examines his career and grapples with the ethical questions that have surrounded medical science in the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly with regard to transplant surgery. It is a complex book for that reason and makes you ponder. The book contains visible endnotes and a decent amount of explanatory footnotes.

This book is not for you if you do not like gory medical details, and especially if you do not like to read about experiments on animals. The book spares little detail on that front. And as is the custom with non-fiction books, this book contains a set of glossy photos. On the first page of this spread, there is a warning stating that the spread contains graphic photos of medical experiments. To make these easier to avoid, the photos on the outside pages of the photo spread are innocuous pictures of humans — all the gruesome content is safely contained within the photo spread. I put a paperclip on those pages so that the book wouldn’t fall open to them accidentally.

I would recommend this with caution if you are interested in medicine and ethics, especially if you’ve read The Icepick Surgeon, by Sam Kean. ( )

The surgery of organ transplantation has taken off in the past fifty years. However, the ability to apply these gains to the nervous system has lagged behind due to the limitations of nerve regeneration. As told in this book, during this time, Robert White, MD/PhD, sought to pioneer head transplantation onto a new body. He was successful in transplanting a monkey’s head onto another’s body. However, he retired and died before his dream could come true.

Schillance’s work seeks to tell his story and the story of this field. The tale is gripping, the character personalities are strong, and the stakes are high. This story is not well-known to the public as journalistically, it has mostly been covered in sensationalist news sources. Therefore, Schillance’s informative tale should reach interested ears.

Is White a humble genius or merely a new Dr. Butcher and Dr. Frankenstein? That gripping question lies behind the historical unfolding of this work’s plot. The reader is left to make up her/his own mind. After finishing this work, I find elements of both stereotypes are true. Animals are harmed to make science advance, but noble scientific aims could save human lives. As White asks, would society rather a surgeon practice on monkeys or a human child?

These relevant and pertinent questions bring us to today as the field has continued in White’s absence. Head transplantation is variously proposed still. A central limitation to White’s work was the inability to bring a paralyzed spinal cord to life. (Thus, the patient would always remain a paralytic.) However, in recent years, nerve regeneration technology has shown promise; additionally, some have developed technology that bypasses the spinal cord by sending signals directly from the brain to local nerve endings. Schillance accurately and excitedly exposits these developments.

As part of the history of medicine, this work is especially relevant to historians and healthcare professionals, but it also has the chance to reach a wider general audience. Again, this story is not well-known but should be. It may enter more into society’s conversations about bioethics in coming years. Schillance casts the facts and situation well, without bias or agenda. Are we ready for the reality of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Ready or not, it may come. ( )