Conclusion

Abstract

In 1972, British cardiac surgeons considered attempting another heart transplant, but the DHSS was adamant that resources should no longer be used for this still experimental procedure.¹ Even though a handful of patients worldwide had survived with a new heart for over a year, the risk of further adverse press response and of affecting renal transplantation rates seemed too great. In January 1973, the CMO, George Godber, wrote formally to various doctors and hospital boards discouraging any further attempts. The next month, the Guardian reported: ‘Sir George Godber… is understood to have advised Mr Donald Ross against attempting to perform Britain’s first heart transplant in three years on the grounds that a failure would have a disastrous effect on other forms of tissue donation’. He feared that ‘kidney transplant surgery, now running at the rate of 500 operations per year would be badly hit by the emotive publicity that inevitably follows a heart transplant’.² The Secretary of the National Kidney Research Fund reaffirmed:

When we had the spate of heart operations four years ago kidney donations dropped to negligible proportions, and I fear this would have happened again if Mr Ross had gone ahead… illogical as it may seem to skilled surgeons, the very word heart has a strong pull on the emotions. Many people are quite happy to will their own kidneys to be used if they die prematurely… but immediately you have heart transplants then the barriers go up. This even happens at the medical level. At the time of the last heart transplants many casualty doctors refused to cooperate too.³