Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death (45 page)

worsening heart block in the last two years of his life.) Little allowance seems to be made for a gray area between these two extremes. Because

of the specific case discussed in the Afterword and others not cited, I

have chosen to rely on the forecasts of my father’s internist and cardi-

ologist, both of whom believed he would have died within a year or two

without a device.

000
world’s second-largest manufacturer of pacemakers
: Janet Moore, “Pacemakers: Still Ticking at Age 50,”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
Sept.

28, 2008, accessed May 1, 2012, http://www.startribune.com/busi-

ness/29828484.html.

000
agreements that keep negotiated prices secret
:
James Walsh, “Secrecy on Medical-Device Prices Hurts Buyers, GAO Says,”
Minneapolis Star

Tribune,
February 11, 2012. Includes an interview with Curtis Rooney, President, Healthcare Supply Chain Association.

000
pacemaker prices
:
Barry Meier, “As Their Use Soars, Heart Implants Raise Questions,”
New York Times,
August 2, 2005, accessed May 9, 2012, http://

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Notes 297

www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/business/02device.html?pagewanted=3&_

r=1.

000
one hospital paid $8,723 more
: Government Accountability Office, Medicare: Lack of Price Transparency May Hamper Hospitals’ Ability to

Be Prudent Purchasers of Implantable Medical Devices (2012), GAO-

12–126, 26.

5: inventinG liFeSAvinG

For the birth of cardiac technology I relied mainly on Kirk Jeffrey,
Machines
in Our Hearts: The Cardiac Pacemaker, the Implantable Defibrillator, and American Health Care
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), especially chapter 2. For Peter Bent Brigham, I drew on Renee Fox,
Experiment
Perilous: Physicians and Patients Facing the Unknown
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959)
;
Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey,
The Courage to Fail: A Social View
of Organ Transplants and Dialysis
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); and Atul Gawande, “Desperate Measures,”
New Yorker,
May 5, 2003, 70–81, an invaluable narrative of the “black years” at the Brigham that alerted me to Moore’s subsequent suicide.

000
The year was 1952; the place, Beth Israel Hospital in Boston
: Kirk Jeffrey, Machines in Our Hearts: The Cardiac Pacemaker, the Implantable Defibrillator, and American Health Care (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2001), 36 P. M. Zoll, “Resuscitation of the Heart in

Ventricular Standstill by External Electric Stimulation,” New England

Journal of Medicine 247 (1952): 768–771; P. M. Zoll, “Development of

Electric Control of Cardiac Rhythm,” Journal of the American Medical

Association 226, no. 8 (1973): 881–886.

000
intense repeated shocks
: David C. Schechter, “Background of Clinical Cardiac Electrostimulation VI: Precursor Apparatus and Events to the

Electrical Treatment of Complete Heart Block,”
New York State Journal
of Medicine
72 (1972): 954.Jeffrey,
Machines in Our Hearts,
53.

000
had been on an external Zoll pacemaker
: Interview with Seymour Furman by Earl E. Bakken, Minneapolis, MN, August 14, 1980, Pioneers

in Pacing Video Series, Bakken Museum and Library; Seymour Furman,

“Attempted Suicide,” editorial,
Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology
3

(1980): 129; quoted in Jeffrey,
Machines in Our Hearts,
54.

000
a young kidney doctor
: Fox and Swazey,
Courage to Fail,
202–203; Debo-rah Illman, ed., “Pioneers in Kidney Dialysis: From the Scribner Shunt

and the Mini-II to the ‘One-Button Machine,’”
Pathbreakers: A Century
of Excellence in Science and Technology at the University of Washington
(University of Washington, 1996), accessed April 30, 2012, http://www.

washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1960c.html.

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298 Notes

000
hearts that stopped beating
: W. B. Kouwenhoven, et al., “Closed-Chest Cardiac Massage,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
173, no.

10 (1960): 1064–1067; Diana Berry, “History of Cardiology: Desmond

Julian, M.D.”
Circulation,
115(22) (2007):113–4.

000
Some surgeons used sterilized Dacron
:
Interview with Nicolas Tilney, MD, December 2011.

000
At the Brigham in peacetime
: J. J. Collins and Dwight Harken. “The Legacy of Mitral Valvuloplasty,”
Journal of Cardiac Surgery
9 (1994): 210; cited in Nicholas Tilney,
A Perfectly Startling Departure
(Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006).

000
Six out of ten
: W. Gerald Rainer, “Pioneer Interviews: Dr. Dwight Harken,” Cardiothoracic Surgery Network, July 4, 2004,http://www.ctsnet.

org/sections/residents/pioneerinterviews/article-1.html. See also, Ste-

phen Westaby and Cecil Bosher,
Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery
147. Isis Medical Media Ltd., Oxford, England 1997.

000
Among those who died
: Dwight Harken, “Fifteen-to-Twenty-Year Study of One Thousand Patients Undergoing Closed Mitral Valvuloplasty,”
Circulation
48 (1973): 357–364.

000
remove the pituitary glands from women
: Atul Gawande, “Desperate Measures,”
New Yorker,
May 5, 2003, 70–81.

000
specialist in medical ethics
: Paul Ramsey,
The Patient as Person
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 238.

000
With their new machines and new skills
:
“Surgery, the Best Hope of All,”

Time,
May 3, 1963, accessed December 20, 2011,special issue available at http://www.time.com.

000
all nine Brigham patients who received experimental liver transplants
: Atul Gawande, “Desperate Measures,” New Yorker, May 5, 2003, 70–81.

000
The patients selected
: Francis D. Moore, A Miracle and a Privilege: Recounting a Half Century of Surgical Advance (Washington, DC:

Joseph Henry Press, 1995), 161.

000
would cool the child’s body
:
James Fogerty,
Converzatione
with Manuel Villafaña, “Pioneers of the Medical Device Industry in Minnesota Oral

History Project,” Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota,

November 20, 1997, 68.

000
seven in a row of Lillehei’s “blue babies”
: Wayne G. Miller, King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery

(New York: Times Books, 2000), 62, 148.

000
Bakken was tinkering in his family’s basement
:
Interview with David Rhees by Earl Bakken, “Pioneers of the Medical Device Industry in Minnesota

Oral History Project,” Minnesota Historical Society, Fridley, Minnesota, August 28, 1997.

000
In the fall of 1958
: This milestone is often mistakenly attributed to Wilson Greatbatch, who invented a version of the implantable pacemaker

the following year. See Jeffrey,
Machines in Our Hearts,
96–105; and in contrast, Barnaby Feder, “Wilson Greatbatch, Inventor of Implantable

KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 298

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Notes 299

Pacemaker, Dies at 92,”
New York Times,
Sept. 28, 2011, accessed September 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/business/wilson-

greatbatch-pacemaker-inventor-dies-at-92.html.

000
the director of research
: Janet Moore, “Pacemakers: Still Ticking at Age 50,”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
Sept. 28, 2008, accessed May 1, 2012, http://www.startribune.com/business/29828484.html.

000
nation’s first “crash carts”
: William Colby,
Unplugged: Reclaiming Our
Right to Die in America
(New York: AMACOM, 2006), 62–66.

000
There was no hope
: Joyce James,
Dubliners
(New York: Random House, 1954), 7.

000
anxiety, depression, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress
:
Elie Azoulay, et al., “Risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Family Members of

Intensive Care Unit Patients,”
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
171 (2005): 987–994.

000
Like spare parts
: Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey,
Spare Parts: Organ
Replacement in American Society
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

000
Hang in there!
:
Shinmon Aoki,
Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist
Mortician,
trans. Wayne Yokoyama (Anaheim, CA: Buddhist Education Center, 2002), 52–53.

000
a study in the
Lancet:
J. D. Hill, et al., “A Randomized Trial of Home-Versus-Hospital Management for Patients with Suspected Myocardial

Infarction,”
Lancet
311, no. 8069 (1978): 837.

000
Another study
:
H. G. Mather, et al., “Myocardial Infarction: A Comparison between Home and Hospital Care for Patients,”
British Medical

Journal
1, no. 6015 (1976): 928.

000
about 2 percent of beds
:
“
Emergency Activity and
Critical Care Capacity,” U.K. Department of Health, accessed June 24, 2012, http://www.

dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Statistics/Performancedataand-

statistics/EmergencyActivityandCriticalCareCapacity/index.htm.

000
in the United States
: “Health Forum, 2010 American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals,” American Hospital Association. Not

all respondents completed this section of the survey, so the actual pro-

portion may be higher.

000
This case report is submitted for publication
:
William St. Clair Symmers,

“Correspondence: Not Allowed to Die,”
British Medical Journal
1 (1968): 442.

000
As he later wrote in his autobiography
: Francis D. Moore, M.D.,
A Miracle
and a Privilege: Recounting a Half Century of Surgical Advance
(Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1995), 237.

000
The fundamental principles
: Diane E. Meier, Stephen L. Isaacs, and Robert Hughes,
Palliative Care: Transforming the Care of Serious Illness
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 24.

KnockingHeaven_ARC.indd 299

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300 Notes

6: My FAtHeR’S OPen HeARt

000
somewhere between 6 percent and 30 percent
: Terri G. Monk and Barbara G. Phillips-Bute, “Longitudinal Assessment of Neurocognitive Function in Elderly Patients after Major, Noncardiac Surgery,”
Anesthesiology
101 (2004): A62; J. Canet, et al., “Cognitive Dysfunction after Minor

Surgery in the Elderly,”
Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica
47 (2003): 1204–1210.

000
In a further reflection
: Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, “Home-Care Workers Aren’t Just ‘Companions,’”
New York Times
Opinion Pages, July 1, 2012.

000
To Any Young Soldier
: Guy Butler,
Stranger to Europe: Poems 1939–1949
.

A.A. Balkema, Capetown, South Africa. 1952.

7: nOt GettinG betteR

000
Congress, in an attempt to cut costs
:
Phone interview with Mark Kander, Director of Health Care Regulatory Analysis for American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, May 31, 2012.

000
To settle a class-action lawsuit
:
Robert Pear, “Settlement Eases Rules for Some Medicare Patients,”
New York Times,
October 22, 2012.

8: DHARMA SiSteRS

000
cost a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars
: “Alzheimer’s Drugs: Sum-mary of Recommendations,”
Consumer Reports,
accessed September 29, 2011, http://www.consumerreports.org/health/best-buy-drugs/alzheimers.htm.

000
two billion dollars in annual sales
:
Katie Thomas, “Drug Dosage Was Approved Despite Warning,”
New York Times,
March 23, 2012, B1—B2.

000
something is being done
: Jane Gross,
A Bittersweet Season
(New York: Random House, 2011), 159.

000
what Adrienne Rich called
: Adrienne Rich,
Of Woman Born: Motherhood
as Experience and Institution
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 236.

000
One day, two of Bowlby’s successors
: Mary Main and Judith Solomon,

“Discovery of an Insecure-Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment Pat-

tern,” in
Affective Development in Infancy,
ed. Berry T. Brazelton and Michael W. Yogman (Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, 1986), 95–124.

000
The path into the light seems dark
:
Stephen Mitchell, trans.,
Tao Te Ching
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), 47.

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Notes 301

9: bROke-DOWn PAlAce

000
astonishingly early
a
ge of twenty-two
:
David H. Schroeder and Timothy A.

Salthouse, “Age Related Effects on Cognition between 20 and 50 Years

of Age,”
Personality and Individual Differences
35 (2004): 393–404.

000
fall by up to 1 percent
: Interview with Timothy Salthouse, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, September 10, 2012.

000
Great breakthroughs in fields like chemistry
:
Timothy Salthouse, “Consequences of Age-Related Cognitive Declines,”
Annual Review of Psychology
63 (2012): 201–226, 211.

000
Myelin, the fatty, white protective sheath
:
John H. Morrison and Patrick R. Hof, “Life and Death of Neurons in the Aging Brain,”
Science
278