Flipper - here are some quotes that Blondie provided on another thread about the personality change. These are more about organ transplants than blood transfusion (which technically is an organ transplant). This was back when organ transplants were verboten as well. I'm sure some dubs made the connection between the heart and blood when it came to these silly ideas.
Thanks to Blondie for her extensive library...
Watching the World/Personality Change...
According to a report that appeared on United Press International of August 18, 1970, the daughter of Philip Blaiberg said that he had experienced a complete personality change after undergoing a heart-transplant operation. Blaiberg was one of the first to receive a transplanted heart. His daughter observed: "I don’t know if it was the drugs or just the transplant, but he was a different man."
*** g71 11/22 p. 31 Watching the World ***Disenchantment with Heart Transplants
Since 1967 doctors have performed 166 heart transplants, but the initial enthusiasm is gone. Too many patients have died—more than 85 percent thus far. There were also bad side effects. There were depression, brief periods of being psychotic, memory lapses, sleeplessness and marked changes in personality. According to Life magazine, immunologists have concluded that "the heart is a peculiar, particular organ, not only a pump, but a creature of some internal, unknown majesty."
*** w71 3/1 pp. 135-136 pars. 10-12 How Is Your Heart?*** It is significant that heart-transplant patients, where the nerves connecting the heart and brain are severed, have serious emotional problems after the operation. The new heart is still able to operate as a pump, it having its own power supply and timing mechanism independent of the general nervous system for giving impulse to the heart muscle, but just as it now responds only sluggishly to outside influences, the new heart in turn registers few, if any, clear factors of motivation on the brain. To what extent the nerve endings of the body and the new heart are able to make some connections in time is not clear, but this cannot be ruled out as one of the several factors causing the serious mental aberrations and disorientation that doctors report are observed in heart-transplant patients. These patients have donor-supplied pumps for their blood, but do they now have all the factors needed to say they have a "heart"? 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.
MedicalWorldNews (May 23, 1969), in an article entitled "What Does a New Heart Do to the Mind?" reported the following: "At Stanford University Medical Center last year, a 45-year-old man received a new heart from a 20-year-old donor and soon announced to all his friends that he was celebrating his twentieth birthday. Another recipient resolved to live up to the sterling reputation of the prominent local citizen who was the donor. And a third man expressed great fear of feminization upon receiving a woman’s heart, though he was somewhat mollified when he learned that women live longer than men. According to psychiatrist Donald T. Lunde, a consultant to surgeon Norman Shumway’s transplant team at Stanford, these patients represent someofthelessseverementalaberrations [italics ours] observed in the Shumway series of 13 transplants over the last 16 months." The article continues: "Though five patients in the series had survived as of early this month, and four of them were home leading fairly normal lives, three of the nonsurvivors became psychotic before they died last year. And two others have become psychotic this year."
While the giving of the drug prednisone and the mind-wearying effects of a serious operation and a long confinement under intensive care are given by Dr. Lunde as the chief causes of these strange personality disorders, it is interesting to observe that Dr. Schneider, "a New York psychiatrist-neurologist and a student of heart-brain interaction, sees other factors modifying Dr. Lunde’s explanations for the psychoses encountered in the Shumway heart transplant series. Dr. Schneider . . . maintains that ‘the heart is more than a plumber’s pump—it is a neuroendocrine battery. It has a little brain all its own, the S-A and A-V nodes and the conduction bundle, and the little waves from this bundle can be discerned along with each heart wave on an ECG [electrocardiogram]. Beyond this, the heart’s extensive manufacture and storage of catecholamines may affect the levels of these neurohormones in the hypothalamus.’" (Ibid., page 18) Dr. Schneider observed that many non-heart-transplant patients who were given prednisone or confined for long periods did not get psychoses.
***
w75 9/1 p. 519 Insight on the News ***Transplant Problems
It has long been known that heart-transplant patients have a higher-than-average amount of postoperative psychiatric problems. But it seems that the same is true with regard to some other vital organ transplants, such as kidney transplants. U.C.L.A. psychiatry professor Dr. Pietro Castelnuovo-Tedesco is quoted as saying: "An outstanding finding following transplantation is the not infrequent occurrence of serious emotional disturbance." One study of 292 kidney-transplant patients showed that nearly 20 percent experienced severe depression after the operation, a few even attempting suicide. By contrast, only about one out of every 1,500 general-surgery patients develops a severe emotional disturbance.
A peculiar factor sometimes noted is a so-called ‘personality transplant.’ That is, the recipient in some cases has seemed to adopt certain personality factors of the person from whom the organ came. One young promiscuous woman who received a kidney from her older, conservative, well-behaved sister, at first seemed very upset. Then she began imitating her sister in much of her conduct. Another patient claimed to receive a changed outlook on life after his kidney transplant. Following a transplant, one mild-tempered man became aggressive like the donor. The problem may be largely or wholly mental. But it is of interest, at least, that the Bible links the kidneys closely with human emotions.—Compare Jeremiah 17:10 and Revelation 2:23.
( 1970)
