By pioneer I mean a true pioneer not someone who flogs books for 60 odd hours a month for a publishing company. I'm referring to a true pioneer, Dr. Christaan Barnard, who died today. He performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant in 1967. He died today aged 78.
It is worth mentioning again because Dr. Barnard gets scant coverage by the WT (I don’t’ have any Awakes from the 60’s and 70’s so if anyone can add any more I’d be grateful.) and when he is mentioned it is negative. Far from being a forward looking or an insightful organization the WTS is blind to possibilities and quick to denounce pioneering attempts at extending human health and lives.
Thirty four years ago the Watchtower responded to a question about accepting organs for transplant no doubt caused by the public interest in transplant surgery.
The Watchtower stated:
When men of science conclude that this normal process (normal immune system healing of disease) will no longer work and they suggest removing the organ and replacing it directly with an organ from another human, this is simply a shortcut. Those who submit to such operations are thus living off the flesh of another human. That is cannibalistic. Watchtower November 15, 1967 Page 702
The same article also comments that the need for such life-saving cannibalistic operations won’t be needed much longer because of the strong evidence that the “new order” is close at hand. In other words, people like Dr. Barnard should give up as they won’t be needed much longer.
A further attack on heart transplants was made in 1971 with a ridiculous article about the figurative heart of the Bible and how this was also the organ in your chest. Since the nerve connecting the brain and heart is severed during transplant surgery the Watchtower said this:
this cannot be ruled out as one of several factors causing the serious mental aberrations and disorientation that doctors report are observed in heart-transplant patients…One thing is sure, in losing their own hearts, they have had taken away from them the capacities of “heart” built up in them over the years and which contributed to making them who they were as to personality. Watchtower March 1, 1971 P135
In other words, Dr Barnard and his cohorts stole these patients’ hearts and all the good that they had instilled in them.
In 1975 the Watchtower was still stating that post-operative heart-transplant recipients experience higher-than-average psychiatric problems adding that kidney-transplant patients also have problems. It is still bad medicine.
The end did not come quite so soon and by 1980, five years after the decisive year of 1975 the Watchtower took a new view on organ transplants. While some Christians were said to feel that transplants are cannibalistic (the ones who read the Watchtower from the 1960’s) it was now a matter of conscience. (See Watchtower March 15, 1980 Page 31) By 1989 enough Witnesses had changed their minds about transplant surgery that the Awake could favorably report that Witness patients who received kidney transplants without blood transfusions had survival rates as high as those of patients who received blood. Thank you Dr. Barnard? Well I’m sure the patients thank Dr. Barnard and other surgeons pioneering transplant surgery for extending their lives despite the nearness of the “new order” when doctors won’t be needed.
Other than a quote from the jogging surgeon “Chris Barnard” (g80 12/22 p7) the only other mention of him is an article about the troubled 1960’s. He gets a footnote mention amongst disasters, riots and deaths in the article The 1960’s A Period of Turbulent Protest.
I wonder how many people have now had heart transplants. In 34 years this headline news procedure has become common place (still a major operation) and gets no one’s attention. The fact that such major transplants were attempted led to break-throughs in tissue rejection drugs and other types of transplant surgery. Dr. Barnard himself worked on other cardiac procedures, designed replacement heart valves and wrote extensively. Thank goodness some people have the foresight and drive to help people now at this time and are prepared to work for it. Vague promises of the future are not worth much if you have to die to realize them. Don’t hold your breath for the Watchtower’s new doctor-less order. We still need pioneers whose work continues to benefit 100’s of JWs.
Thirdson
'To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing'
Edited for missing year in quote and changed typo "then" to "the".
Being the proud and immodest apostate that I am I had to look for my post to see how many times it has been read.