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A Piece Of My Mind



This year is the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant.  Dr. Christiaan Barnard of South Africa successfully placed a donor heart into Louis Washkansky.  Twenty-eight year old Denise Darvall was struck by a car and her family, without hesitation, offered the organ for transplantation.  Sadly, the amount of drugs to keep Mr. Washkansky from rejecting the heart also weakened his immune system, and poor Louis died 18 days later to pneumonia.   But his new heart beat to the end.

The world kind of flipped out.  Besides the usual religious zealots who claimed Barnard was playing Frankenstein, everyone kind of gasped in awe.  I was pretty young but remember how big a deal it was.

Today there are 3500 heart transplant operations every year and the lifespan of those lucky enough to procure a heart is around 15 years.  

Fast forward to a couple months ago.  The first penis and scrotum operation was performed at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.  Now is the time to snicker and make your jokes.  I'll wait till you get it all out.




OK, done?  The recipient was a soldier who was injured in Afghanistan.  They can put armor in the Humvees but they haven't yet advanced enough to prevent injury to a body from an IED.  The young guy who received the transplant will, hopefully, have full urinary and sexual function when all is said and done.  

Naturally the heart vs. junk thing is entirely subjective.  Most would assume heart wins every time: heart is life.  However, a case can be made that junk is equally important: junk is identity.  The line is fuzzy and, I think, not an easy argument to win on either side.  The cases to be had are weighted down by several factors:  what it means to be a man without manhood, or is that even the starting point?  What is a man?  What are factors that make one a man?  Is life so precious as to disregard the accoutrements that make us what we are?  Can one be cavalier about existing without an organ or two?  What of the paraplegics?  Do they see themselves as the soldier with this injury?

I'm like the Scarecrow who received a Doctorate in Thinkology from the Wizard.  We can come up with the questions pretty easily, but the answers are harder to find.  That is why philosophy is so much fun - unlike science we only ask the questions, and maybe logically come up with a series of answers.  Often the truth lies in whoever is asking the questions.  Only the soldier who gave so much for our freedoms can answer with any veracity.  The rest of us are mere pikers.  I wouldn't be so sure as to tell that soldier life is precious at all costs.  I likewise wouldn't tell him that his identity is a penis and scrotum only.  I do know that many survivors of war and accident have handled the loss with bravery and equanimity.  I'm sure an equal number have not.  To make a crude joke paraphrasing Shakespeare, "The answer, Dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our pants."  I'm sorry for that, and perhaps I need to make amends by quoting someone else far more elegiac than I:    
     
Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology and Stanford University wrote:

"I am not worried if scientists go and explain everything.  This is for a certain reason:  an impala sprinting across the Savannah can be reduced to biomechanics, and Bach can be reduced to counterpoint, yet that does not decrease one iota our ability to shiver as we experience impalas leaping or Bach thundering.  We can only gain and grow with each discovery that there is structure underlying the most accessible layers of things that fill us with awe."

Perhaps in a hundred years we will make these operations routine.  Perhaps we will eventually end war and the mutilation of young people.  Maybe we will have the insight to see ourselves mentally whole when we are not so physically.  All I can do is congratulate the 11 doctors and plastic surgeons who performed this operation.  And wish this soldier well and my thanks for his sacrifice.  And hope he lives a happy and fulfilled life.  The doctors did their part, now its up to him to do the rest.     


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