The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks meets Get Out in this “startling…powerful”
(Kirkus Reviews) investigation of racial inequality at the core of the heart
transplant race.
In 1968, Bruce Tucker, a black man, went into Virginia’s top research hospital
with a head injury, only to have his heart taken out of his body and put into
the chest of a white businessman. Now, in The Organ Thieves, Pulitzer
Prize–nominated journalist Chip Jones exposes the horrifying inequality
surrounding Tucker’s death and how he was used as a human guinea pig without
his family’s permission or knowledge.
The circumstances surrounding his death reflect the long legacy of mistreating
African Americans that began more than a century before with cadaver harvesting
and worse. It culminated in efforts to win the heart transplant race in the
late 1960s. Featuring years of research and fresh reporting, along with a
foreword from social justice activist Ben Jealous, “this powerful book weaves
together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its
characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows
of centuries of racial injustice” (Edward L. Ayers, author of The Promise of
the New South).
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.