During the Cold War, surgeons on both sides of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart. American neurosurgeon Robert White had an even more ambitious idea: Why not transplant the brain? A founder of the Vatican's Commission on Bioethics, White developed neurosurgical techniques still used in hospitals today. But as Brandy Schillace reveals in this "delightfully macabre" tale (NYTimes), White was also waging a battle against the limits of science, performing bizarre experiments on monkeys as part of a quest for the secrets of immortality.