Elephants on Acid Read Online Free PDF

that, at least as far as the dogs were concerned, two heads were not better than one.
    The dogs made headlines around the world. The press nicknamed them Russia’s “surgical Sputnik.” In 1959 United Press reporter Aline Mosby visited Demikhov’s lab and met Pirat, a German shepherd/puppy combo. Accompanying Demikhov on a walk with Pirat, she noted Pirat had to be led by the ears because a normal collar wouldn’t fit around his neck.
    Mosby also reported that although the two heads shared a circulatory system, they led separate lives. They slept and woke at different times. The puppy even ate and drank on its own, though it didn’t need to because it received all its nourishment from Pirat. When the puppy eagerly lapped at a bowl of milk, whatever went into its mouth dribbled out the stump of its esophageal tube onto Pirat’s shaved neck.
    Was there any medical justification for the dogs? Critics didn’t think so. They dismissed them as a publicity stunt. Demikhov, however, argued that they were part of a continuing series of experiments in surgical techniques. His ultimate goal was to make possible a human heart-and-lung transplant. In fact, another doctor eventually performed the first human heart transplant—Dr. Christiaan Barnard in 1967—but Demikhov is widely credited with paving the way for it.
    Demikhov also envisioned a future in which banks of surgical spare parts could be created by grafting extra sets of limbs onto human “vegetables”—his term for brain-dead patients. When needed, the limbs would be removed. An 7 entire market in used extremities could come into existence. However, Demikhov seriously underestimated the problems involved with tissue rejection. For that reason, you don’t need to fear a Demikhov Limb and Organ Bank opening on a street corner near you anytime soon.

Franken-Monkey

    The monkey opened his eyes. Even through the haze of drugs, he could sense something was wrong. He tried to move but couldn’t. Why were his limbs not responding? He felt scared and wanted to run. Instead he could only stare straight ahead. What was this place he was in? Who were these men that surrounded him? Angrily he tracked their movements with his eyes and warned them away the only way he was able—by baring his teeth and snapping menacingly at the empty air.

    When American leaders learned that Vladimir Demikhov had created a two-headed dog, they knew they had to respond. For the sake of national pride, they not only had to match Demikhov’s achievement, but also had to do one better. Thus ensued one of the more peculiar chapters of the Cold War—a surgical arms race. Though perhaps head race would be a more fitting term.
    America’s answer to Demikhov was Robert White. In 1960 White was a thirty-four-year-old Harvard-trained surgeon with great ambitions. He wanted to make a name for himself, and if in doing so he could simultaneously help his country, then all the better. So in 1961, with the help of the U.S. government, he established a brain research center in Cleveland, Ohio. The government told him to do whatever it took to beat Demikhov.
    White agreed with critics who thought Demikhov’s dogs were a bit of a stunt. Sensational, yes. But still a stunt. After all, stitching the upper body of a puppy onto the neck of an adult dog was not a true head transplant. What White envisioned doing was altogether more ambitious. He would cut the head off an animal and then sew on a new, functioning head. It would be a true head transplant, the kind of thing found only in Hollywood movies and science-fiction novels.
    But before he could do this, he had to learn more about how the brain functioned. This would take him years of study and experimentation.
    Step one in this process was to find out whether a brain could be isolated from the body and remain alive. On January 17, 1962, he proved this could be done. He removed the brain of a monkey from its skull and sat it on a stand, supplied with blood