The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South

After receiving organ transplants, patients can experience organ rejection. In cases of acute or immediate rejection, increased doses of immunosuppressive drugs can control organ rejection if it is detected early. Chronic or long-term rejection does not respond well to treatment, however. Organ rejection was the greatest risk for transplant recipients and the cause of the high rates of death in the early years. Klett experienced acute rejection but nevertheless died.

Transient respiratory cessation is known as apnea. A state in which a patient experiences “temporary suspension of breathing” (151) is an apneic state. Bruce Tucker was in an apneic state approximately 10 hours after his emergency surgery. He was placed on a ventilator, and physicians considered death imminent. The transplant surgeons, interested in his organs, followed his case.

Biological death is the “cessation of a patient’s heartbeat, pulse, or breathing” (101). Virginia law recognized only this definition of death when Bruce Tucker’s transplant occurred. Based on that definition, Wilder filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming that Tucker was not legally dead when his organs were taken.