The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones is a timely book during these difficult times. The author conducted his research and presented the facts surrounding the first heart transplant in the early 1960’s in a well written narrative. It is both riveting and disturbing to read about the racial inequality practiced by doctors with the knowledge of medical institutions and society in general. Many parts were difficult to read because of the content. But unfortunately, these events took place. Chip Jones leads us through the debates surrounding the definition of death as strides were made in medical knowledge and in technology. . But the advances in medical technology did not include advancements in racial equality. I highly recommend this book to learn about the race to conduct the first heart transplant amid the racism in this country.

I admired the research and writing of this non-fiction book because the 1968 episode portrayed therein is a concrete example of the beginning, middle, and end of a racist act. The act (actually more than one act) is put clearly in context in all its cruel but ambiguous nature, complete with people who are well-meaning, ambitious, thoughtless, careless, and on and on. The whole book is like a thought experiment: What if this detail had changed? What about this other detail? Would the whole story had turned out differently if character X hadn't taken that day off work? What if person Y had been more thoughtful?

This book caused me to come to this conclusion: while racism is certainly bad, in order to accomplish a really impressively gross and appalling affront to human dignity, racism has to be combined with other human failings – for example, egotism, administrative sloth, and ambition, to name a few – on a successive series of occasions. That's what this book demonstrates. It's not a fun read, but it's a necessary one.

For example:

– ambition + racism: In this book, the Richmond, Virginia, surgeons and hospital felt that it had been “scooped” in the race to perform successful heart transplants by Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who observed related procedures during a long visit to the hospital. (Barnard then used this knowledge to make history by performing the first successful human-to-human heart transplant in his native South Africa, where he faced fewer bureaucratic obstacles – and moral qualms – than his American counterparts.) This event “primed the pump” for a racist act, in my opinion, meaning, in the wake of Barnard's procedure, the surgeons wished to capture a fraction of the glamour and celebrity that they felt Barnard had swindled from them. As a result, they were willing, even eager, to believe that the African-American man with a serious brain injury who came by ambulance, unconscious and smelling of recently-consumed liquor, was a drifter with no immediate family to object to his heart being used in a transplant.

– arrogance + racism: The surgeons could have found evidence of the injured man's living relatives by checking the clothes he was wearing when he was taken to the hospital, which were stored … at the hospital. They didn't, because surgeons apparently do surgery only and not menial administrative tasks, like checking for next of kin. Would the surgeons, who had ultimate responsibility, have been so quick to assume that others had done all possible to contact relatives if the potential donor was a white woman?

– administrative sloth + racism: The hospital had an address for the injured man. It was a boarding house in an African-American neighborhood of Richmond. The hospital sent unaccompanied white policemen to the boarding house to ask if anybody knew the injured man. Unsurprisingly, no one admitted to knowing anything and no one supplied helpful information. “The cops had little choice but to leave. There was no active investigation and no search warrant. As they pulled away from the darkened house, they knew they could let the [hospital's] doctors know they'd done their best” (Kindle location 2116).

– injustice + racism: Afterwards, the donor's family – who only found out about the “donation” when the funeral director told them that the corpse was missing a heart and other organs – tried to sue the hospital for damages. At that time in Virginia, lawyers were permitted to dismiss potential jurors on the basis of race. The jury was entirely white. So was the judge. The donor's family lost. While there were some complicated legal and ethical issues in play, and the donor's family might have lost no matter what the composition of the jury was, it is hard to completely discount race as a factor in the hospital's acquittal.

To the extent that this book has a hero, it is former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder, who went on (long after the events described in this book) to become the first African-American to hold that position. I have been a Virginia resident for over 30 years, including during Wilder's tenure as Governor. I was amazed that I had not heard of this incident before.

This book has drawn comparisons to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which it resembles in certain details and narrative arc. In the book about Lacks, the white writer manages to break through, to a certain extent, the understandable sense of grievance and frustration of the surviving members of the Lacks family, which gave the book at least a slightly more upbeat tone towards the end. In this book, the donor's son met all attempts at contact with a stony silence. Perhaps appropriately for our time, it seems like redemption and reconciliation is farther away than ever.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for a free advance electronic copy of this book for review.

I received a free ARC of this book through Netgalley.

This is the story of Bruce who was a hardworking man, who was relaxing after work one day with some friends and alcohol and feel back off a short wall which led to a hospital stay which is where his life ends, but this book begins. This is a story of racism in a time where schools and hospitals were still segregated, where there are no black people on the jury. A well-written story that makes you think about when does death arrive and what justice means.

Chip Jones is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist who brings to life an amazing story a succinct synopsis of which is drawn straight from the subtitle of his book, The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South.

To give readers some background into the story, Jones provides an extensive history, running from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century, of physicians and artists utilizing the services of “resurrection men” to provide bodies for surgical practice and anatomical research. As a physician myself, I know how important these cadavers are for medical study. Because there were so few cadavers available at my medical school, each was shared by seven students, and we practiced suturing techniques on chickens and pork feet rather than human cadavers.

Complicating this practice are moral, ethical, economic, and racial issues. When the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) was opened, one of the primary reasons for its location was the availability of plenty of cadavers—drawn from the slaves that made up one-third of the community’s population as well as poor whites.

Jones highlights the shameful history of systemic mistreatment of black people in America. People were sometimes kidnapped off the streets, killed, then used for medical research. One of the more blatant examples is the US Public Health Service’s Tuskegee Study which ran from 1932 to 1972 in which 600 impoverished black men, sharecroppers in Macon, Georgia, were told they were getting free health care from the government. Without appropriate written consent, they were instead followed for 40 years as researchers sought to study the natural history of syphilis. And even when penicillin became the standard of care to treat syphilis, these men were denied treatment.

Jones shows how pervasive racism was even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bruce Tucker, an African American male, was admitted to MCV after sustaining a serious head injury. Unbeknownst to the family, his heart and kidneys were harvested with his heart being transplanted into chest of a White businessman. Tucker’s family was not properly contacted regarding his admission to the hospital nor approached about donating his organs. Only when the mortician prepared Tucker’s body for burial did the family learn of his missing organs.

As a physician, I'm sad to say, I've seen blatant racism from my peers directed toward persons of color. Even now racial and ethnic minorities receive substandard health care compared to Whites—even with similar ages, incomes, insurance status, and severity of conditions. Covid-19, for example, disproportionately affects black communities; African Americans die at a rate more than double that of other ethnic groups (50.3 per 100,000 people), compared with 20.7 for whites, 22.9 for Latinos and 22.7 for Asian Americans. Native Americans in New Mexico comprise 11% of the population, but account for 57% of the deaths.

For people wishing to read more about the endemic racism in American medicine, I recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

For those interested in transplant medicine, try When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon by Joshua D. Mezrich.

For those interested in racist ideas in America, read Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and other books by Ibram X. Kendi. It is amazing that these outdated ideas of the white race as supreme can be dated back to Aristotle.

This accounting of the first heart transplant performed in Virginia in 1968 also encompassed quite a bit of background on the history of “grave robbing” for the purpose of medical study, as well as a thorough account of the history of organ transplants.
While reading the first section on “grave robbing” I worried that the book would be bogged down in a bunch of technical info and read like a textbook, and sometimes it did.
It picked up when covering the beginning of organ transplants and especially the transplant surgeons paving the way.
Then about halfway through, when I realized I was still only halfway through, I just wanted it to be done. The trial regarding the heart transplant referenced in the book’s title seemed to go on forever.
I did read to the end, but it was a slog. I really just skimmed through probably about the last ten percent book.

Timely subject matter that deals with a tumultuous time in Richmond Virginia history. Ramificatons of the actions changed the tide nationwide for organ donations and transplants.

This is an incredibly thorough, and, unsurprisingly, very depressing account of one of the first heart transplants in Virginia. The author is a local journalist and worked as the communications director at the hospital where this happened, which is likely how he uncovered this in the first place. He goes out of his way to explain both the local history and the history of the transplant race, which definitely helps flesh out the how and why of what happened. I will point out that the epilogue is kind of awkward, as it’s a white guy wondering why the only son of a guy who was killed by medical negligence might not want his dad’s story trotted out. The story is important, especially in the historical context of things like the Tuskegee experiments. But also, the sheer condescension and general bullshit of the male doctors trying to hit the heart transplant race and the willingness of them to let this man die to get an old white businessman a new heart just fucking rankles. Worth a read when it comes out but be ready to throw it against the wall a time or ten.

This book was fascinating! Sometimes facts are stranger than fiction and this book really demonstrates that. I find reading about the civil rights era to be interesting because how people treated each other and what they got away with is astounding. Imagine being taken to the hospital as a black man for a minor injury and your family learning you didn't make it. Later learning that your heart had been taken. This book is a must read if you're interested in Southern history.

I have seen all the rave reviews, and I hate to be the party pooper. I know my review will anger some. But based on the description of the book, I was expecting an in-depth analysis of a particular incident, that is, the 1968 theft of Bruce Tucker's heart without his family's consent by Virginia's top research hospital. Certainly, such an analysis would require the author to provide some background information in order to situate the incident in its historic context. But after a few opening pages on 1968 incident in question, the reader must suffer through pages and pages of "context," including a history of body snatching for medical training purposes in the 19th century (not to mention a brief discussion of Renaissance artists' dissections of human bodies!), a history of President Eisenhower's heart problems and his love of fatty foods, and of course a long-winded history of organ transplants). After making my way through all of this, I felt a bit like the victim of a bait and switch. Obviously some may find this "background information" quite interesting and thus will enjoy this book immensely. But I, for one, am tired of book descriptions designed to capture the reader's interest, but which do not accurately represent the contents of the book.

AUTHOR

Chip Jones is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. You can learn more about this author here or visit his Facebook page here.

WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE?

The Organ Thieves has broad appeal. Everyone from medical students to senior professors and laymen alike will enjoy this work. Students of history, ethics, research fellows or anyone who wants to know more about the early history of heart transplants in the United States will find this book invaluable.

SYNOPSIS

The Organ Thieves is a compassionate retelling of events that introduced a new and highly anticipated advance in medical science. It’s a real-life drama of a radical new cutting-edge medical procedure, involving esteemed surgeons and a seemingly inebriated, impecunious victim of an accident. The apparent theft of the heart and two kidneys from a decent hardworking man, eventually resulting in a $1,000,000 lawsuit.

The subsequent trial spans the whole gamut of questions relating to ethics, motivations, incompetence and a questionable disregard for state law and patients care. The trial covered poor medical administrative practices, prejudice and ethical questions that still plague modern medical ethicists. All this set against the contextual history of medical research set in the segregated South. From the dark days of slavery and the Devil’s Half Acre, to the ‘demonstrators’ and the ‘resurrection-men’ of pre 1884, through to the mid 1990s.

CONCLUSION

The Organ Thieves is well-paced throughout, resplendent with historic detail, clear and concise prose that make for a work that is difficult to put down. I read the last 4 hours in one sitting and I was more enthusiastic in my praise and admiration with each passing chapter.

My only criticism is, I felt at times, there was an understandable bias exhibited by the author. Rather than simply presenting the facts, thus leaving the reader to make their own independent assessment, I sensed he was assessing the historic interactions by todays values.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Chip Jones, NetGalley, and Gallery/Jeter Publishing for affording me the opportunity to review The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South.

After the first chapter, I double checked my kindle: Did I start the right book?

I did not read the description and from the title, I expected a lesson in medical history. But that is just the background story - really. This is a crime drama. This is a courtroom drama. This is a segregation drama in the American South. Yes, and it is a medical drama better than any you may have seen on TV.

This is a story.

And it all starts when a father and funeral director find a body with missing organs.....

Chip Jones investigates the horrific events that led to the first heart transplant in Virginia. This book will hit home for anyone who's had a loved one in the hospital and it's a reminder why consent from family is so important for anyone in the medical field. The events that impacted the donor's family are unimaginable and heartbreaking.

The Organ Thieves was a surprising read. I thought I would be reading a true crime mystery, and ending up with much more than I anticipated, in a very good way - a well-researched story of Bruce Tucker, who was cruelly used as an organ donor in 1968 for an early heart transplant. Tucker went to the hospital with a head injury, and wasn’t seen or heard from again. No contact/permission was sought from his family, who later sued for wrongful death. The book goes far back in history of using African Americans for cadaver harvesting and even grave robbing. This was a long book; several times I was ready to give it a “DNF” but kept plugging away at it. The trial was very interesting and passionate, and laws were changed over what constitutes death as a result. I had no idea of any of this history, and very little knowledge of transplant surgery, and Mr. Jones gave an excellent education. This book will tug at your heart (no pun intended) and make you question ethics and morality in people and especially in medicine. Would highly recommend just for the history of heart transplants and mistreatment of African Americans, and becoming more aware of what lengths people will go to in order to promote making medical history. This book grew on me, and I’m very glad I took a chance on this one. It was worth the length. Five stars,
Thank you to Netgalley, Gallery/Jeter Publishing and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.