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After decades of experimenting on animal brains, the US neurosurgeon Robert J White proposed executing a ‘whole body transplant’ on a rhesus monkey in the late 1960s. By performing a complex surgery that involved removing one monkey’s head and attaching it to another’s body, White believed he might unlock a method to potentially save human lives in the future. It was a medical experiment widely considered to be controversial, even in an era before the animal rights movement had reached the mainstream.
Yet, as this video from TED-Ed details, with the approval of some mainstream agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the procedurally complicated, ethically complex and certainly grisly experiment was conducted in 1970. Chronicling both the surprising results of the surgery and the enduring controversies around it, the short animation touches on what White’s experiment reveals about centuries-old questions like the mind-body problem, as well as intricate issues on the frontiers of bioethics.
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
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Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
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Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
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Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
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Sports and games
Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play
5 minutes