Book Description
In 1968, a year not short of news, a story from within the traditionally reticent medical profession kept making headlines: transplantation of the human heart. Following the pioneering South African operation the previous year, over 100 cardiac transplants were performed worldwide, three of them in Britain. But with most recipients dead within weeks, the procedure was all but abandoned for a decade. Hearts Exposed offers the first analysis of the media involvement in the early heart-transplant operations in Britain, understanding this as an integral and influential part of a crucial period in medical history. Using a wealth of newly available sources, it demonstrates how, by threatening public trust in the medical profession, press and television coverage changed transplant surgery, professional ethics and the management of medical-media relations.
