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

In the fall of 1973, Virginia became one of only three states to establish criteria to determine an individual’s time of death. Dr. William F. Reid, the first African American elected to the Virginia Assembly, sponsored the bill. His support helped limit objections from African Americans still upset about the ruling in the Tucker case. While the law referred to the biological definition of death, it stipulated that “the absence of spontaneous brain functions and spontaneous respiratory” (299) function marked the incidence of death. While some physicians did not want to codify the definition of death, preferring to make it a matter of medical judgment, the bill passed unanimously in the Virginia House and Senate.

Wilder took solace in the fact that the Tucker case led to a redefinition of death in the US. However, he reiterated that Bruce Tucker was not dead per the Virginia law in effect when his heart was removed. The Tucker case left many unresolved questions in its aftermath. One was why the respirator was turned off if Bruce’s organs were to be donated: He was already dead and the respirator would have kept the organs in better condition. Jones notes that the number of such unresolved questions demonstrate “how confusing the early days were for pronouncing the deaths of severely brain-injured patients who were potential sources of organs” (301).