From Hypothermia to Cephalosomatic Anastomoses: The Legacy of Robert White (1926-2010) at Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland

Dr. Robert J. White (1926-2010) was an eminent neurosurgeon and bioethicist, renowned for his classic work in hypothermia and pioneering mammalian head transplant experiments. He founded the Division of Neurosurgery at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital (currently MetroHealth Medical Center, a level 1 trauma county hospital) and became the youngest full professor at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. With over 500 research articles to his credit, he founded the Brain Research Laboratory at what was then the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, which was also home to future leaders in neurosurgery, neurosciences, and allied specialties. He transferred a healthy monkey head onto a surgically beheaded monkey body under deep hypothermic conditions drawing both laurels and criticisms alike. Despite a largely controversial neurosurgical research career, his original contributions to deep hypothermia have found profound clinical applications in modern trauma and vascular neurosurgery. The new fusogens and myelorrhaphy methods being tried in Europe hold promise for a future of reanastomosing 2 homologous or heterologous tracts in the neuraxis.