Too Scary To Be Fiction! ‘The Organ Thieves’ : Book Review/Interview

September 4, 2020

Written by Capt McNeely

Georgia Division ZADF Twitter: @ZADF_ORG

Here on horrorfuel.com we focus a lot on entertainment and horror as a fun world of terror that we escape into. I absolutely love doing book and movie reviews, press releases, and anything else possible to expand this world of horror that I love. However, the time comes now and then when real life is far more terrifying and crushing than any movie or novel. The book by Chip Jones The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South outlines the horrifying story of Bruce Tucker.

On May 24, 1968 Bruce Tucker went into the hospital after suffering a serious head injury. The hospital claims to have tried urgently to contact his family, but nobody seemed to notice his brother’s business card stuck in the front pocket of his jeans. Meanwhile, Bruce had not come home from work and his family was searching frantically for him.

When he entered the hospital, Bruce was said to be “disoriented” but aware and awake. Sadly, however, he quickly worsened and fell into a coma. In less than a day, Tucker was pronounced dead and his heart was immediately cut from his body and placed in the body of a the white and wealthy 54-year old Joseph Klett. This made Klett one of the first people to receive a heart transplant in the United States. This, at first glance seems like it could be a success story and even good luck for Klett. The tragedy comes as Jones digs deeper into what actually happened.

First things first, Tucker, upon entering the hospital was seen as a “charity” patient. He was black, had been having a few post-drinks with his friends when he fell, and the doctors deemed him “unlikely to pay his bills.” He was taken to the main hospital where he was dismissed as a “charity patient.” This placement was not due to his financial situation or the alcohol on his breath. Bruce Tucker was labeled these things simply because of the color of his skin.

Here is where the story really gets twisted. Tuckers family was finally contacted by a friend who had seen Bruce entering the hospital and his brother, William Tucker, collected the body. The hospital said nothing of the heart transplant. It wasn’t until the funeral director noticed something odd when it was discovered that Bruce’s heart and kidneys were missing. While William was frantically searching for his brother, Doctors Richard Lower and David Hume were already receiving congratulations and honors for the operation. The name of the donor on the medical records for the heart transplant was left blank.  Bruce Tucker has become a hidden footnote in the “success” of the heart transplant.

The book gets even darker and more horrifying when Jones digs into the history of the treatment of African Americans in the medical world. This history displays a disgusting view into the sickest part of humanity. Using black patients as “teaching material” for medical schools, grave robbing for African American bodies to spare “whites” the “indignities of anatomical training,” removing good limbs for the sole purpose of teaching amputation techniques and more. In 1950 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia inflicted third degree burns “for investigation purposes.” These absolutely horrendous and scary practices on African Americans happened in schools and hospitals ranging from the poor regions in the south all the way to the elite Harvard University. The care of African Americans in the 19th century was sen as “teaching material” and not to actually help the patients.

The story of Bruce Tucker is tragic, but is only one of many on the list of horrific injustices in the history of racism. We are now seeing much more awareness and understanding of the fight to abolish racism, but it is far from dead. The Organ Thieves covers the history and the ramifications of the stolen heart transplant and opens our minds and eyes to the hidden world of medical racial injustice.

Doctors Richard Lower and David Hume

Chip Jones is no novice at investigation or writing. He is a Pulitzer nominee who has a long list of experience and accolades to his name. The Organ Thieves shows Jones at his best as he focuses on the history of racial medical inequality, grave robbing, and racial experimentation. Jones did a litany of interviews with Bruce Tucker’s family, doctors, medical examiners, and anyone else who had any knowledge or experience with this heart-wrenching history. This book spares no details and casts a spotlight on the ugly underbelly a world that we all need to be aware of.

I have included and interview I had with Chip Jones below. He is a man who cares deeply about this topic and did an amazing job at presenting it in an accessible, informative, horrifying way. This is not an easy book to read due to the subject matter, but it is a powerful book and I recommend it to everyone. I encourage us all to take time to see the real horrors in this world as well as the fictional ones that we dive into.

 

Thank you so much for doing this interview. I really appreciate not only the interview, but the book itself. This is obviously an important topic and I am eager to promote this book and help heighten awareness of these real life horrors.

(Horror Fuel)

I have spent a good amount of time reading your book and looking at the story of Bruce Tucker. It is absolutely tragic and heart breaking. How did you first hear about Bruce Tucker and why choose this particular history for your book?

(C.J.)

I first learned about Bruce while working as communications director of a large local medical society in Richmond. A colleague told me how history had been made in Virginia’s capital in 1968 with the first heart transplant in the state’s history (and, as my subtitle notes, the first in the “Segregated South,” since there were still LOTS of segregated places – schools, police leadership, social clubs, etc.).

Though I STARTED my research with a focus on the “heart transplant race” of the 1960s, I became fascinated – and troubled – by the fate of this lone factory worker who had his heart (and kidneys) removed without his prior consent, nor that of his family which was desperately seeking to find him on the day of the organ thievery (May 25, 1968).

(Horror Fuel)

You mention the pressure put on Doctor Lower to perform the surgery. Do you believe that this is an ongoing issue still in the medical field?

(C.J.)

Honestly, I can’t say for sure, since it’s not something I’ve had time to research. But my best guess is that somewhere, somehow, some doctor – or related health worker, such as a Biotech researcher perhaps? — Is being pressured to rush his/her research. The quest for the Covid-19 vaccine, for example, clearly has led to a rush to be first. This reminds me to some extent of the heart transplant race of the 1960s, but with far greater social/health/political implications. So with billions of dollars at stake – and perhaps the Nobel Prize in Medicine – this seems a likely pressure cooker. I just hope their efforts bring a healthier outcome than we see in The Organ Thieves! Finally, as Deep Throat told Bob Woodward as he tried to untangle the sordid tale of Watergate, “Follow the money!” Anytime big bucks are involved, I’m willing to bet that people are put under pressure to cut corners, rush, etc.

(Horror Fuel)

We have seen a spike is fighting against racism in the past few years. Why do you think it is now becoming more of a public issue?

(C.J.)

I would start with enhanced iPhone cameras and the more regular use of filming of incidents of police brutality that otherwise would never have come to light. For an intriguing historical parallel, consider the use of remote TV cameras in the early to mid 1960s that first brought the Civil Rights Movement into America’s homes on what was then only three TV networks that almost everyone watched. Soon the same thing happened when Vietnam became what was called the first “living room war.” When Americans saw the blood on their new color TVs, it became impossible for the president/Congress to pretend this was all working out overseas. Similarly, today I think there’s a technological reason for why deaths can’t be covered up anymore. Beyond that, there seems to be a generational reason – with GenXers and Millennials and their younger cohort sick getting sick and tired of seeing the same bad movie replaying itself over and over: the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of local police. Lastly, I can see future historians studying the impact the pandemic had on helping people take to the streets to protest that Black Lives Matter.

(Horror Fuel)

With a focus on grave robbers and resurrectionists, can you speak about the history leading up to the extreme racism we see in your book?

(C.J.)

While many doctors and academics knew about this dark history of body-snatching to provide freshly “materiel” to the Anatomy classes of 18th to early 20th century American medical schools, when I began reading about it – and seeing pictures as well – it was a true eye opener. Indeed, it was like a century-plus-long American Horror Movie – hence the mention of “Get Out” in our promotional materials. And like Jordan Peele’s transplant masterpiece, this true life story had a creepy dirty little secret – that is, medical schools actually employed a “Body Man” who lived in the basement of the school to go out at night to meet the criminal “body snatchers.” This wasn’t just in the South, either: it started at Harvard University in the late 1700s and was adopted by many medical schools down the East Coast – Columbia in NYC, Penn in Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and on down to Richmond and points south.

(Horror Fuel)

One of the most tragic things for me in this story is what Bruce Tucker’s family went through both during and after his death. What can you tell us about their fight and how/if it changed anything for future patients?

(C.J.)

They went through a living hell to get any answers to what happened to Bruce. In many ways, that “historical trauma” still exists, in my view, for Bruce’s surviving son whom readers meet late in the book, But in 1968, in the immediate aftermath of MCV’s “historical” operation, its administrators did ask the parents of its second heart donor for permission to use his heart (a young Black man shot in the head). His healthy heart was put in the chest of a gifted and spirited Black educator from Indianapolis, Louis Russell. Though it wasn’t publicized later, I do think the Tucker family – and their subsequent civil lawsuit for “wrongful death” – did make a difference, both in Virginia and around the country as hospital administrators feared more litigation if they didn’t get prior consent for heart transplants.

(Horror Fuel)

You have done an amazing amount of research. In addition to Bruce’s family, who did you speak with to get the details of this story and how did they feel about your book?

(C.J.)

I spoke with some of the doctors involved (now very old, obviously) and I’ve heard from one who thought I was very fair to the heart surgeons – though he didn’t like the provocative title, which was intended to spark interest and start conversations. I also spoke with some of the lawyers involved in the epic 1972 trial in the family’s “wrongful death” lawsuit – which, by the way, was the FIRST such lawsuit over a heart transplant in American history. I spoke with one of the jurors in the case, who retains vivid memories. And so on – as much as I could find people still alive, I interviewed them. This included former Governor L. Douglas Wilder, the first Black man elected governor in American history. Gov. Wilder told me this was the first interview he’d granted about the case in nearly half a century after serving as legal counsel for the Tucker family.

(Horror Fuel)

You have an impressive resume, how does this book compare to other things you have written?

(C.J.)

This is the first non-military book I’ve written, and definitely one getting national attention. As a former investigative reporter, the three years of work on The Organ Thieves reminded me of the five straight years I spent covering the “tobacco wars” in the mid-to-late 1990s. (with Philip Morris USA based here).

(Horror Fuel)

I was extremely happy that you reached out to horrorfuel.com. Though we often focus on the entertainment aspect of fictional horror, it is important that we use this platform for important topics like this as well. Knowing that you are speaking to fans of horror, what would you like us to see and understand about your book?

(C.J.)

First, I hope they can see the links between history and film. Like any good story, my book starts with a mystery and what happens when a character is destroyed by overwhelming powers in the world. If I’m not mistaken, over its history in literature and film – starting with the invention of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and perhaps some of the stories of Richmonder Edgar Allan Poe – the horror genre has grappled with those most elemental human fears of death and dying and guilt (e.g. Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”). Horror, and more broadly science fiction, also serves to dramatize the broader implications of Technology and “progress.” In my book’s case, the “progress” of medicine trampled upon the human rights and dignity of Bruce Tucker, and that of his family.

(Horror Fuel)

Along the lines of horror, do you think that movies such as “Get Out” help racism awareness, or do they lesson it by fictionalizing such an important topic?

(C.J.)

Art helps us DEEPEN our awareness of things we might otherwise ignore. We’ all are subject the often subconscious effects of our national memory. I definitely think film can serve to dramatize the subtle ways that racist attitudes, fears, myths, and aggression can shape our lives in strange and sometimes troubling ways.

(Horror Fuel)

Is there anything else you would like to add or mention to the readers of horrorfuel.com?

(C.J.)

I hope that The Organ Thieves becomes a teaching tool for individual readers and for schools as well. A free Teacher’s Guide is available from Simon & Schuster. More information about my book and career can be seen at chipjonesbooks.com.

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