Journal article
Considering Death: The Third British Heart Transplant, 1969
HP MacDonald
Bulletin of the History of Medicine | The John Hawkins Press | Published : 2014
Abstract
On May 29, 1969, London’s newspapers carried dramatic headlines: “Donor’s Heart ‘Switched Off’ by Doctors.” Margaret Sinsbury had died in Guy’s Hospital, after which her heart was removed and transplanted. This, the third British heart transplant, crystallized the deep concerns that were by then swirling around the wider transplant enterprise, notably whether the people from whom organs were being taken were dead or had been made so. Yet a year earlier, to reassure the public in this regard, a formula had been devised at the U.K. Health Ministries’ MacLennan Conference to enable death to be certified based on cerebral rather than cardiac indicators. This was the first such formula in the Eng..
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Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The research for this article was generously funded by the Australian Research Council through a Future Fellowship (Project Number FT100100762) which is being undertaken at the University of Melbourne. I thank the anonymous readers for BHM who reviewed earlier drafts of this article, which has benefited from their questions, comments, and suggestions. I am also grateful to the archivists and librarians at the National Archives, England; the National Archives of Scotland; and the Wellcome Library in London.