11/9/2023 0 Comments Dr. barney clark![]() Medical ethicists are arguing that his experiment should stop. Last summer, his two remaining patients died: Murray Haydon, 488 days William Schroeder, 620. Now 20 months have rolled past since he did his last implant, the case of Jack Burcham, whose chest proved too small for the artificial heart. “It tends to make you more of a showboat,” he said, remarking that the medical profession does not look kindly on “TV doctors.” At conferences, he finds himself mobbed at the door, regardless of the quality of what he has said. They go white-water rafting, something he could not do while the patients were alive. To spend time with his wife and seven children, the family often has to leave town. Demands on his time are insistent time alone is rare. He has signed more McDonald’s cups while waiting for Chicken McNuggets than he cares to remember. He has kept Barbara Walters waiting.īut the flip side of his publicity has been a complete loss of privacy.įor two years, while his patients lived, his beeper accompanied him to the shower. A soft-spoken surgeon from a small town in Utah, he has flown across the world. He has met Steven Spielberg and James Michener. He has dined at the White House with a Saudi king. The windowsill of his small, spare office is cluttered with drafts of 10 long-awaited scientific papers on his last three cases. ![]() Nationally recognized specialists fly in to advise him on the heart. Teams from across the country come to him for training. His work has brought him extraordinary prestige-and Humana Corp.’s promise to foot the bill for 100 artificial heart implants. These days, DeVries is a central figure in the Humana Heart Institute, run by one of the most profitable private health-care chains in the world. You don’t want to tell them, ‘I’m not going to do it because I’m scared it will ruin the project.’ You don’t say that.” That’s not very humanitarian,” he said dryly. What did he tell them-that he didn’t want to jeopardize the experiment? And you can keep him alive, but you can’t, because of this.”Īsked how many times, he said simply, “There’s been quite a few.” It’s horrible to have to go in and look at a patient and know that he’s going to die. “And let me tell you, that’s a very bad decision to make. “You end up asking yourself if the societal interest of the experimentation outweighs the individual interest of any patient,” he confided uncomfortably, stabbing at a bowl of green speckled pasta in a small restaurant in suburban Louisville.
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