From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Aug 23 2002 - 22:56:12 MDT
The other nite I saw on TV bits of an Aussie True Medical Saga where a
dying older guy was waiting for a heart transplant; he got it at the last
moment, and seems to be doing okay. What was extraordinary and distressing
was the way his wife, a housewife without much of a clue, was blubbering
in terror and grief before the op. The docs eventually deigned to talk to
her and she explained that she'd always been taught, as we all know, don't
we, that the heart is where our feelings live and arise from, not from the
head, and with another person's heart in his body hubby wouldn't be able to
love her any more, they'd have to start all over again (and I suspect she
felt she was now an unattractive old thing and the new heart would feel
scorn for her--she'd be *rejected by his new heart*). It was such a 12th
century pottage of superstitious nonsense I was filled with anger and
sorrow. Presumably *many* people still think this way. When the >H stuff
starts coming down the pike in a gusher, we'll have worse than
anti-darwinism to confront.
Damien Broderick
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