This film and its discussion deal with animal experimentation. If you find the subject offensive, and cannot hold back your distaste, you may wish to join us next week for Money Driven Medicine, a documentary about the health care industry. If you wish to civilly discuss the bioethics involved in brain transplants, please join us.

Dr Robert J. White is a modern miracle worker, or a modern Dr Frankenstein, depending on how you look at him.  On March 14, 1970, Dr. White managed, after years of research, to successfully transplant the head of one rhesus monkey onto the body of another. The repercussions in terms of bioethics were extreme.

It took White nearly a decade to get to the point of a successful full-body transplant. Using techniques pioneered in the Soviet Union to isolate the organs, then developing a form of extreme hypothermia to keep the brain alive during surgery–a method still in use today–White was able to eventually transplant a dog brain into the body of another dog.

At this point, I’m sure many of you appalled by the idea of animal experimentation are screaming in horror. But if we did not do animal experimentation/testing we would not have the many advances in science we do today, including space travel, vaccines, cancer treatments and transplants. Recall, if you will, that in 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner rather forcibly inoculated his gardener’s son with cowpox then locked him in a barn for several days, re-infected him with smallpox, and then locked him up again to see what would happen. The kid lived, and now we have smallpox vaccine. So, anyway, back to Dr White who says:

I have been an advocate for almost a quarter of a century now of the need for animal experiments. All of the surgical procedures that we have discussed are done under general anesthesia. At no time would I or my staff permit any sort of painful operation to be conducted. I do think it is absolutely necessary for the success of mankind and for control of diseases that we have animal models.

White’s work proved that brains could be transplanted to bodies, and that the brains would work–his first subject, a rhesus monkey bit its handlers and could express hunger and other basic needs–and, in theory, could work on humans, though the bodies would remain paralyzed. So here comes the debate: If a quadriplegic develops cancer, and a new body could be found, should such surgery be done? Should a patient with multiple sclerosis have a fully body transplant? Who would decide? What if there is a greater demand for bodies than supply? Does organ harvesting come before full body transplant in terms of priority? Who makes these decisions? And would it be covered by insurance? Dr. White says:

But I often ask people to imagine sitting on a committee which has a responsibility of providing and approving organs for transplantation. And let’s say a man comes before you, totally paralyzed from the neck down, he’s now in his fifties, and he has been told that in six months he will be dead because of multi-organ failure. Are you going to sit there and tell him he can’t have a transplant? Say that it’s at a point in the future when we have genetically engineered animals whose organs will be available to us. Say you had bodies coming out of your ears, and you could certainly grant him one. Well, some people still wouldn’t. There is a moral issue here. They feel it’s too dramatic: who is the person?

Director/producer David Feinberg interviews a feisty retired Dr. White, now 84 years old, who spends his days writing at a reserved table at his local McDonald’s. Passionate and enthusiastic, Dr. White expounds on his history and discoveries, and is justifiably proud of achievements–in 1994  he became a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a Vatican advisory board–and he believes the brain is the seat of soul.

Dr. White’s work changed the way surgery is done and changed the lives of thousands of patients. Whether we will have full body transplants in his or our lifetimes remains to be seen, but the ramifications are intense.

Part 1, Part 2 – Vice TV’s documentary: Dr. White’s Total Body Transplant


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