EXPERTS CLASH ON TRANSPLANT ISSUE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 15

EXPERTS CLASH ON TRANSPLANT ISSUE

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, September 11. One of the most outspoken attacks yet made in Britain on heart transplant surgery has been delivered by a doctor whose job it is to save lives i n virtually hopeless cases.

Dr Geoffrey Spencer, who is in charge of Britain’s largest intensive care unit at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, attacked “the vultures who hang around the body, waiting to snatch our organs, starting with the cornea andl ending with the heart.” Dr Spencer was also critir eal of the speed at which, h e said, decisions on death were reached when it was known that the patient might t«e needed for a transplant. i He was speaking to pm "Evening News” report tr after a press conference in connection with the fourllh World Congress of Anaestbeslologists in the Royal Festival Hall, London. 1 Dr Spencer, who referrmi to what he described as “t he poor success rate of heirrt transplants,” and to the ethics of transporting domirs miles across country while they are still alive to another hospital where the recipirint is waiting, is quoted as s lying: “I don’t know whether heart transplants are going to be of benefit to mankind or not. It is debatable. I :im simply worried about Ihe donor problem. I don’t w: int you to think I’m throw 1 mg a spanner in the works, because I’m not.”

Hs disclosed that Mr D onald Ross, the South African surgeon who leads Britain’s heart-transplant team, recently sent a letter to most London hospitals asking th em to keep in mind the fact t hat the hearts of dying patients could be used in transplants. The letter asked that Mr Ross be informed if suclt a possible donor was brought into a hospital. Dr Spencer commenced: “My reaction is to disraiss the letter until I have treated the patient, and I would go on treating the patient until there was absolutely no hope of life whatsoever. By that time I do not imagine the heart would be of much use to Mr Ross.

“My unit has never supplied a kidney donor, simply because we have never had a situation where we e ould go ahead, carte blariche, knowing there was no hope for the patient. We hav e always been trying to save them."

“WASTE OF PART} I” But Professor 1 [enry Beecher, who earlier this year headed the committee of American medical experts who produced a new clefinl-

tion of death, said that patients in a deep and irreversible coma with no hope of recovery should automatically be regarded as “spare part” donors. For although their hearts might still be beating, they had suffered “brain death.” he said, and to neglect using their organs for transplant surgery was “an unforgiveable waste.”

Professor Beecher stressed in a conference speech that vital "spare part” organs

were being lost because patients In a totally incurable state of deep coma were being kept “alive” unnecessarily. “Every year that such an individual occupies a hospital bed, 26 other people are deprived of treatment,” he said.