Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

by Donald McRae (Author)
Key Phrases: topical hypothermia, recipient dog, human heart transplant, Cape Town, South Africa, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Although Christiaan Barnard (who died in 2001) is venerated as the first to successfully transplant a human heart, on December 3, 1967, McRae shows that he was only one of four heart surgeons who pioneered this miraculous specialty from 1958 through 1968. The South African Barnard hadn't toiled in research labs, but, according to McRae, appropriated the work of three Americans and, in a period of debate over whether to define death by the brain's or the heart's cessation, he took a beating heart from a brain-dead donor. McRae portrays Barnard as a rural Afrikaner with an inferiority complex, a "lothario" with a deeply troubled personal life and a publicity hound who delegated postoperative patient care to others as he hobnobbed with celebrities and the media. As McRae, an award-winning London-based sports writer (Heroes Without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens), demonstrates in this top-notch journalistic feat that elucidates complicated medical procedures, the Americans whom Barnard bested were medical giants. Norman Shumway in California and Richard Lower of Virginia were masters of transplant and rejection research, and New York's Adrian Kantrowitz would eventually develop the balloon pump that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. (June 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Through life histories, flashbacks, personal interviews, and compelling narration, McRae recounts a real-life race to the death. History books will forever spell the name of Christiaan Barnard correctly as that of the first surgeon to perform a successful human heart transplant. But for luck and timing, however, the name could as easily have been that of Norman Shumway, Adrian Kantrowitz, or Richard Lower. The world never realized at the time that three other, equally brilliant surgeons stood ready and able to take the title of first as his own. With something like 2,500 heart transplants every year in the U.S. nowadays, it is easy to take the procedure for granted, though it remains miraculous. Barnard was the arrogant pioneer who first took up its challenge and, as this gripping story of four giants converging on that accomplishment reveals, changed heart medicine forever. Much more dramatic than any fiction about its subject could be. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; 1st edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399153411
• ASIN: B000N3T4GU
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #668,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Race, September 11, 2006

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart (Hardcover)

For those who lived through the sixties, the space race was a thrilling and defining endeavor. Few who remember it, however, will have forgotten another race that captured people's imaginations at the same time, the race to get a human heart transplanted. Maybe, like the space race, it was overhyped and exaggerated, but like the space race, the competition was a sensation that had serious aspects and effects on the future. In _Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart_ (Putnam), Donald McRae has told an important story, the exciting tale of pioneers competing on the frontiers of medicine, with the losers making lasting contributions and the winner descending into a tragic chaos fueled by fame.

Norman Shumway, who had difficulty in getting into the field of heart surgery. After training, he got a job at the University of Stanford as "the guy in charge of the dialysis machine." The lowly post did bring him into contact with Richard Lower, who was doing experiments in a lab that leaked whenever it rained. The experiments involved surgery on dogs, removing a dog's heart and replacing it, for instance. In 1959, they transplanted a heart from one dog to another, and were ready to do it on humans by 1967. A year before, Adrian Kantrowitz, working in Brooklyn, had taken another tack on heart transplants, reasoning that doing the surgery on infants would be less liable for rejection complications. He was thwarted by others who would not let him take the still-beating heart from the doomed donor infant. Christaan Barnard in South Africa did not have to worry about the overdue acceptance of brain death as being more important in defining an end of life than heart cessation. A brilliant surgeon, he looked in on Lower's dog surgery, knew he wanted to do it, and two years later did it on a human. Although the patient lived but eighteen further days, the world went wild over the operation, and Barnard was catapulted into fame that got him audiences with political leaders and bedtime with countless women. He married three times, generally made a mess of his life, and died in 2001, his intense personality having crammed in risk and daring during his surgical years, but leaving him unloved by others, and stripped even of his membership in professional surgical organizations.

Just as it is hard to name the second man to walk on the Moon, it is hard to name the second one to do a heart transplant, but once Barnard had done it, the procedure took off and is not at all remarkable now, with 2,500 being done annually in the US alone. There had been a real race to do the first one, and Kantrowitz, Shumway, and Lower all could have taken the trophy, and felt (with some justification) that Barnard, for all his gifts as a surgeon, had jumped in precipitously using their results rather than earning his own qualifications by experimental procedures beforehand. No matter how much they may have envied the fame that came to Bernard for his first, none of them envied how it all turned out for him. Shumway, who died earlier this year, continued to work on rejection problems late into his life and remained a beloved teacher. Lower, having ushered brain death into US law, worked with Shumway on rejection problems, and now works part time as a physician for the underprivileged in Virginia. Kantrowitz works in his lab perfecting his Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump, a device for supplementing a failing heart that has saved more lives than actual transplantation. The victor in this race got the spoils, and the ambiguity of that term was never any more pronounced.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Medical Page Turner, July 15, 2006

By	Gabriele Ford (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart (Hardcover)

Many of us remember the news of the first heart transplant, done, of all places, in South Africa. But only those on the inside knew that several physicians were on the brink of reaching this medical mile stone. Donald McRae describes four physicians working diligently toward the first human heart transplant. The efforts, creativity, egos and motivations of these doctors lay the background to this fascinating medical story. It reads like a medical research timeline, interwoven with facts and factoids about the major players involved.

The descriptions of the doctors' various situations will surely appeal to a wide audience -- interesting to medical types as well as lay people. I was impressed by the degree of research and referencing of this book -- without giving it the flavor of an academic publication. I could not put the book down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Every Second Counts", January 9, 2007

By	Burton P. Hoffner - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart (Hardcover)

This well written book provides insight into the personalities, goals and methods of the surgeons who worked tirelessly to develop the procedure of heart transplant. In many ways it reads like a novel with the moral that the best doesn't always win the race. Society and mankind has benefited greatly from the efforts of most of these people. The winner of the race got the spoils but paid a heavy price. It is well worth reading.