British Team Criticised

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31672, 7 May 1968, Page 17

British Team Criticised

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, May 6. Commenting on the spate of heart transplant operations performed by surgeons in several parts of the world, the “Sunday Telegraph” asks: “Are we now engaged in a gruesome kind of medical Olympic Games.” It adds: “If so, Hippocrates will be turning in his grave.”

The newspaper says in an editorial: “If we have any pride left in the Union Jack, the one place where we do not wish to see it is in the operating theatre. “Today’s pictures of Mr Donald Ross’s surgical team holding ‘l’m Backing Britain’ symbols and sporting neckties adorned with an anatomical heart throw a dubious light on what otherwise would have been hailed as a great British achievement

“ . . . South African politicians have used Dr Barnard’s pioneer work as propaganda material. President de Gaulle has instigated a change in the law in furtherance of a French attempt to get into the heart-transplant race. “And now a British team flaunts a national slogan to advertise an achievement whose validity rests solely on its usefulness to the whole human race.

“Admittedly, it is part of the human condition that man’s divinely-inspired urge to extend the frontiers of knowledge and power should

be conditioned by his own competiveness. “Thus, the exploration of the infinity of space becomes a function of the terrestrial rivalry between America and Russia. “But we shall all soon be dangerously out of our depth if we cannot sublimate such chauvinistic feelings when we are in the presence of the grave question of life and death that spare-part surgery presents to mankind as a whole.”

Taking a similar line, the “Observer” says: “There can be nothing but admiration for the tremendous technical achievement of the medical team at the National Heart Hospital .... But there is an obvious danger: that doctors may become Infected by a spirit of international competition—a kind of rivalry in medical athletics. “For medicine is different from all other sciences, in that its prime concern must always be the welfare of people, not the advancement of knowledge, except in so far as this contributes directly to the health of patients.”