ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one of the many "leads" Professor Jay Katz that offers in a bit more depth: the application of informed consent to artificial heart experimentation. It argues that Katz is certainly correct in proposing more in-depth, informed and trusting conversation between doctor-researcher and patient-subject. Katz persuasively demonstrates that Philip Blaiberg, the recipient of the world's second human-to-human heart transplant, regressed when in the presence of Dr. Christiaan Barnard. Katz continues by noting that since the first heart transplant operations were "extraordinary" procedures, candidates should be required to learn about them, and not permitted to give disclosure and consent. Work on informed consent is necessary, but not alone sufficient to permit artificial heart experimentation. Permanent artificial heart implants should be suspended at least temporarily because of the devastating results they have had on subjects and their families, because their original justifications are no longer valid, and because the consent process used is too primitive to protect human subjects.
