Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Part I Overview
- Part II Four case studies
- Part III Lessons, questions, and challenges
- 7 Risks and rights
- 8 Compensating the injuries of medical innovation
- 9 What is fair? Medical innovation and justice
- 10 The role of the public
- 11 What is possible? Toward medical progress in the public interest
- Notes
- Index
9 - What is fair? Medical innovation and justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Part I Overview
- Part II Four case studies
- Part III Lessons, questions, and challenges
- 7 Risks and rights
- 8 Compensating the injuries of medical innovation
- 9 What is fair? Medical innovation and justice
- 10 The role of the public
- 11 What is possible? Toward medical progress in the public interest
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In October 1981, Dale Lot, a thirty–seven–year–old veteran working as a fireman in Florida, was forced to quit because of severe congestive heart failure. His case was terminal, doctors told him, and transplant surgery was impossible. The artificial heart was his only hope. He thus began a desperate – and highly publicized – campaign to persuade the University of Utah to let him be their first “human guinea pig.” His appeal, backed by the fire fighters' union and orchestrated by a flamboyant trial attorney, included repeated attacks on the “murdering bureaucrats” at Utah who were blocking his request, a barrage of publicity, and finally a public telegram to the White House. The University of Utah was already trying to broaden patient eligibility, and Lot's campaign probably hastened their efforts. But Lot finally abandoned his personal quest for an artificial heart when it became clear that he would be refused on the grounds that his heart condition was accompanied by diabetes and hypertension, and was linked to long–term alcoholism.
Dr. Barney Clark, the man finally selected as the first recipient, was, by most accounts at the time, an ideal candidate. He was plucky, and he had strong support from his wife and children. He seemed, in the words of a University of Utah social worker, “a classic choice.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Worse than the DiseasePitfalls of Medical Progress, pp. 285 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988