The Organ Thieves: A Heart Transplant Without Consent From The Black Family Involved

So let me tell you about what happened to an African American family of Richmond, Virginia in 1968. William Tucker's brother Bruce went missing.  He learned that Bruce had been located at the Medical College of Virginia.  He had to actually go there to be told that he was dead, and would need to make funeral arrangements.  This had been difficult for William Tucker because polio had left him unable to walk without crutches.  He didn't find out that Bruce's heart and kidneys were gone until the mortician at the funeral home told him.  How did this happen without the family being informed?  That's the story told in The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones.  It's a non-fiction book about real events.  I found it very powerful.  It's my first five star read of 2021.

                                    

                                                                      

The Organ Thieves gives historical background involving medical schools paying grave robbers to obtain bodies in order to teach students anatomy.    In the Medical College of Virginia during the 19th century no one cared if  they used the bodies of slaves and free Blacks for this purpose.   The Medical College of Virginia even stated in their publicity material that no  White man was ever dissected there.  The deliberate choice of using Black bodies in medical schools also happened in the North. Chip Jones pointed out that medical schools in New York were using the corpses of African Americans as far back as 1787. We know this because of the riot protesting the practice during that year in New York.  Jones said that this may have been the earliest Black Lives Matter protest in the United States. I would add that Black deaths also matter as well as respect for Black burial sites.  By 1884 body snatching by medical schools was illegal.  They were supposed to get permission from families.

 So in 1968, the Medical College of Virginia had committed a crime when they took Bruce Tucker's heart for a heart transplant without getting family permission.   Jones' narrative of events shows how this happened. He quotes from Son of Virginia, the memoir of the Tucker family's lawyer, Doug Wilder.   Wilder claimed that the hospital considered Bruce Tucker a derelict.   Wilder believed that this was an assumption based on racism.  

I thought that The Organ Thieves was very thorough in exposing the roots of medical racism by showing us the history of the theft of Black bodies for medical purposes throughout the history of the United States.  Readers of this book should be outraged, as I was.