Robert J. White is the groundbreaking surgeon who in the mid-1970s--against all odds--pioneered the monkey head transplant, forever changing the face of monkey ownership as we know it. Wait, what's that? Your monkey still has its original head? Wow. Get with the program, chief.
But Dr. White's work isn't merely limited to lopping the heads of macaques. He's also performed head transplants on dogs. Even more also, however, he's spent the past half a century exploring the way the brain functions and trying to figure out a way to preserve neurological consciousness when the rest of the body craps out. He is pretty much our favorite real-life mad scientist, and may know more about the rough mechanics of the nervous system than anybody else in his field, AND he was the Pope's personal adviser on bioethics. The Pope! So we decided to visit him at the suburban McDonalds he works out of to pick his brain about picking other people's brains. And monke...