Review: Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-and-Death **

Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-and-Death ** by William H. Frist
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Remember the Terri Schiavo case?

In the Terri Schiavo case, a brain-damaged woman's husband wanted to remove her gastric feeding tube. Millionaire Republican Tennessee Senator Frist opposed the removal and in a speech delivered on the Senate Floor, challenged the diagnosis of Schiavo's physicians of Schiavo being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS): "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office". Frist was criticized by a medical ethicist at Northwestern University for making a diagnosis without personally examining the patient and for questioning the diagnosis when he was not a neurologist. After her death, the autopsy showed signs of long-term and irreversible damage to a brain consistent with PVS. Frist defended his actions after the autopsy.

I figured, IMO, how could this man be a doctor, at all? It turns out he was a leading heart transplant surgeon in the second wave of this innovative and critical procedure and wrote this book to demystify the practice, promote donor registration, and generally be a leader for progressive, forward-thinking transformation.

Go figure.

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