The blighted son, p.9
The Blighted Son, page 9
Journalistic ethics aside, Edwin knew that he had to relay this new and shocking piece of information to his news editor.
‘Christ almighty. A swastika tattoo, you say. Bloody hell. Great story,’ said Ross, using, as he often did, the name of the Lord Jesus as an expression of surprise with no intent of religious offence.
‘It is a good story, I know, but we cannot attribute it to the hospital and they have asked me not to use it at all, if possible – at least not yet.’
‘Can we not just attribute it to a hospital spokesman?’ asked Ross.
Edwin explained, ‘They wouldn’t be happy with that, Ross. There’s only a handful of people who would have seen the tattoo and Fisher would know who they are. And, of course, he will have to go back there again for another check-up before too long. Ross, they do recognise that it is newsworthy but have specifically asked us to keep it on file until such time as it emerges from another source… as I am sure it will before long.’
‘OK, but don’t kick it into the long grass. I’d like to think that we will be able to carry a piece about it before too long. Keep me posted.’
‘I will, yes.’
*
That opportunity came quite unexpectedly only a few weeks later. It was a bright October day with the midday temperature in the upper teens, and Edwin was about to go out to buy a birthday card for his wife during his lunch break, when his office phone rang.
‘Newsroom, can I help you?’ he said cheerily.
‘Am I speaking to Edwin Benn?’ asked a woman with a Lancashire accent.
‘You are, yes.’
‘You don’t know me, Mr Benn, but I felt I had to call you. My name’s Sylvia Hartshorne. I’m the licensee at The Kettledrum Tavern, Jim Fisher’s local – you’re the reporter who has been writing all these stories about his heart swap, aren’t you?’ she began.
‘Yes, you are right. That’s me,’ said Edwin, pricking up his ears in anticipation. ‘I think I know your pub… I seem to remember I once came in to warm up after I’d been covering a story about a blizzard that blocked the roads, leaving drivers stranded. Anyway, how can I help you?’
When he picked up the handset, Edwin had expected it would be something of little consequence that would take only a minute or so of his time, but when he realised that it was about James Karl Fisher, he sat down at his desk, flicked open his spiral notebook and prepared to give his caller his full and undivided attention. Lunch and the greeting card would have to wait.
‘May I ask how you know him?’ asked Edwin directly, half expecting that as the landlady of Fisher’s local, she could well be a sympathiser with his odious racist views and would be ringing to complain about something he had written.
But he couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘I’ve known Jim Fisher for donkey’s years, ever since he moved over here from Liverpool,’ she said. ‘But I never really knew anything about his past or what sort of a bloke he was until I read those articles you wrote in the paper after he had his heart transplant.
‘He used to come in the pub several nights a week and one night, after I had read your article about his crimes and prison sentences, I plucked up the courage to tell him what I thought of him. When he’d had a few pints, he used to tell me that he fancied me and say that my late husband was a really lucky guy. I never felt that he would threaten me or get nasty, especially as there were always lots of other people around.
‘I suppose I noticed things over the years that made me think he was a bit of a racist, but he never really caused any bother so I just tended to ignore it.’
Edwin interjected, ‘What sort of things did you notice, Sylvia – is it OK to call you Sylvia?’
‘Yes, no problem. What did I notice? Well, I always noticed that he would move away if any Black people ever came in – which, to be honest, was not very often. Then there was one occasion I remember in particular when a Jewish couple from Rochdale had their wedding reception at the pub and he just got up and buggered off home.
‘When he next came in I had a big row with him. I told him that I’d prefer anyone to a horrible neo-Nazi like him and his cronies and, for a time after that, he just stopped coming in and I thought that I had seen the last of him.’
Edwin sensed there was a big news story waiting in the wings and felt a number of questions queuing up to be asked.
‘Do I take it then that he has now come back and is one of your regulars again?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. He started coming in on the odd occasion but he’s now in the pub two or three nights a week – and during the day as well – mostly on his own but sometimes with some of his old mates from the gym.’
Edwin asked another direct question. ‘Do they ever cause you any problems?’
‘Not really. There’s been the odd time when I have had to tell them I’d have to ban them if they didn’t stop making racist comments but for a long time now he’s behaved himself – most noticeably since my husband, Laurie, died about eighteen months ago.’
‘Why do you think that is – I mean since your husband died?’
‘Well, he always told me he fancied me when Laurie was alive, but after he died he must have thought that he was in with a real chance and I did go out with him for a meal on a couple of occasions. He also took me to the Grand National at Aintree and once to the races at York. He could be quite good company and was certainly always very generous.’
Edwin was intrigued by her anecdotes but was not sure why she had called him. ‘So, you obviously got to know him pretty well. But has something now happened that—’
Sylvia interrupted. ‘I know what you’re going to say – you want to know why I called you. Well, let me tell you. I think you will find it very interesting.’
‘Go on, I am most interested,’ said Edwin, his ballpoint poised to record her comments in shorthand. He had abandoned the idea of finding a birthday card for his wife.
Sylvia took a deep breath before continuing, ‘May I call you Edwin?’
‘Yes, of course, you can.’
‘Well, Edwin, he’s now just not the same bloke. Since his transplant, he has been a completely changed man. I don’t really know how to describe it. He’s like one of those people who go off on pilgrimages to Lourdes and say they have seen a vision. I’m not a religious person but it’s like he had some sort of revelation, seen the light. He’s certainly not the same person he was, that’s for sure.’
‘Sounds like you’re describing some sort of biblical epiphany,’ said Edwin.
‘I don’t know what that is but, without any exaggeration, it’s like the nasty old devil I remember of old has walked back into the pub and become some sort of saint, certainly a Mr Nice Guy. It’s almost like he has had a new brain as well as a new heart.’
‘What sort of changes have you noticed, Sylvia?’
‘It’s difficult to know where to start, to be honest – he just behaves differently, even looks different, less aggressive, less angry. He’s altogether more relaxed, more tolerant of people, never makes any racist comments and he now doesn’t seem to hang about with all his hangers-on any longer. In fact, I’m told that he’s sold the gym where they all used to hang out.’
‘That is all certainly very interesting – quite an amazing, miraculous transformation from the Jim Fisher of old. What do you think has brought about this dramatic change in him?’ Edwin asked.
Sylvia paused to consider her answer. ‘In my mind, I have no doubt that it was the transplant. I’m sure of it. It just cannot be anything else. I’m not a medical expert but it just has to be his new heart. It’s changed him into a new person.’
Journalistically, Edwin realised that this was potential dynamite. James Karl Fisher, it seemed, had not only had a change of heart anatomically but had also undergone a change of heart psychologically and emotionally. This was big news.
He quizzed Sylvia for more details. ‘Are there any particular, practical changes that you have noticed?’
‘There are, yes. For a start, he’s having all his tattoos removed – it’s costing him a fortune by all accounts. I don’t know whether you know or not but when he first heard that his heart donor was a Jewish person, he had a swastika tattooed over his heart – which I had to tell him was a bloody stupid, horrible thing to do.’
‘As it happened, I did know about the swastika… but you say it’s now gone as well as the rest of his racist tattoos. Obviously, something has dramatically changed the way he thinks and you could well be right, that it was having someone else’s heart. I’ll be checking that out with the medics, for sure, in due course.’
‘What do you think, Edwin? Do you think that someone’s whole personality can change after they’ve had a heart transplant? Would it just be a physical thing or psychological, or maybe a combination of both?’
‘To be honest, I just don’t know. It’s something that I have never come across before but I can well believe that it’s a very real possibility. I will most certainly find out.’
Edwin glanced up at the office wall clock and realised that he would have to be content with a sandwich lunch from the canteen and that the birthday card for his wife would have to wait until the following day.
‘Is there anything else, Sylvia, you’ve noticed in particular about the way he’s changed?’ he asked.
‘Well, apart from the fact that I no longer hear him slagging off “Blacks, Jews and Pakis”, as he used to call them, he seems to have taken on some new interests – things that he never really had an interest in before.’
‘Such as?’
‘He regularly plays chess with one of our regulars who comes in two or times a week, on a couple or more occasions he’s joined in on our karaoke night which he never did before his transplant and he told me that he’s started tracing his family history on the Internet. He didn’t do any of those things before his transplant,’ said Sylvia.
‘Fascinating, really fascinating. I’m going to be looking into all this. There’s every possibility that the transplant team at the hospital may have come across this type of phenomenon before. I’ll certainly be asking them about that – and if they’ve noticed any changes in Fisher, of course.’
Sylvia added, ‘At first I thought that it was probably my imagination but it definitely isn’t. He just isn’t the same person as he was. In fact, I have never seen such a big change in anyone as I have with Jim Fisher.’
Edwin took note of her contact details and promised to make contact with her again should he glean any relevant medical information. They agreed to keep in touch and then said their goodbyes.
‘Sounded like an interesting one. It’s about our neo-Nazi transplant friend, I gather,’ said a newsroom colleague, Niall, who was sitting only a few feet away and had picked up the thread of the conversation.
‘It was, yes,’ confirmed Edwin. ‘It could be very interesting, to say the least. Could be a case of sinner turns saint after heart swap… but right now I’m interested in something to eat and a mug of sweet tea.’
He had planned to go to the office canteen but instead started thumbing through his notes, marking key sections with asterisks in the margin. As he did so, he beckoned one of the messenger boys and gave him some coins.
‘Can you go and get me a chicken mayo sandwich, a bag of plain crisps and a mug of tea,’ he asked.
Had Marcus Lieberman’s donor heart given Fisher much more than a new lease of life? Was it possible that psychosomatically he had also been given a completely new personality? Could he even have acquired some of the traits and characteristics of his donor? Was it a phenomenon known to medical science?
It opened up an exciting and fascinating area of research for Edwin and he could not wait to get started.
As a medical journalist, he knew that anatomically the heart was simply a four-chambered pump that circulated blood around the body. But he also knew that since the dawn of civilisation, it was regarded as the seat of mankind’s emotions, his psyche, his spirituality – his very heart and soul.
Be it in the classical literature of Ancient Greece or Rome, the works of the great poets, romantic Victorian novels or even the language of contemporary pop culture and music, the heart is seen as the barometer of human emotion that had given rise to a lexicon of idioms and phrases in everyday common English usage.
People, for example, could “find it in their heart”, they could “follow one’s heart” or “speak from the heart”. Someone who was well-intended had “their heart in the right place”. People could “get to the heart of the matter” or wish for something or someone “with their heart’s desire”.
They could express their true feelings in their “heart of hearts” or their “heart could sink” if they became discouraged or disappointed. They could “open their hearts”, act out of the “goodness of their hearts”, “put their heart into something” or, at times of despair and distress, “pour out their heart and soul”.
James Karl Fisher, it seemed, was having a change of heart. Surgically, it was an anatomical fact. Another man’s heart was now beating inside his chest. Psychologically and emotionally, it now seemed that he was also undergoing an equally impactful personality change.
An initial trawl through the wealth of academic research papers on the subject confirmed that it was a well-recognised, well-documented phenomenon. References to clinical studies around the globe confirmed that a heart transplant could lead to significant, permanent changes in a recipient’s personality caused not only by emotional triggers but also by real physiological changes.
Edwin was fascinated to see that reports published in academic journals around the world, referred to the role of “cellular memory”, of “intracardiac neurological memory” and “memory transfer” – of memory transmitted from one individual to another through the heart nerve cells.
His many years as a medical journalist had taught him to recognise the difference between serious peer-reviewed reports and fanciful, unsubstantiated claims written by cranks and charlatans. The ones he was now seeing with respect to heart transplantation were not in the dangerous kite-flying category but authoritative papers based on balanced research conducted by health professionals. They stressed that whilst the majority of heart transplant recipients did not experience any personality change post-surgery, one in five reported that they did experience changes and a percentage of those reported “drastic changes”.
It seemed clear to Edwin, based on all the information he had been given about Fisher’s “reincarnation”, that he was one of those for whom the transplant had, indeed, resulted in radical changes. But it was certainly not without precedent.
According to the wealth of authenticated medical and scientific research that Edwin was able to identify via the Internet, Fisher was far from unique.
One of the largest studies of heart transplant recipients, conducted by Paul Pearsall, Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek at the University of Hawaii and published in the journal of Integrative Medicine, noted post-operative changes in their preference for certain foods, music, art, career choices, sensory experiences and even changes in their sexual and recreational preferences.
It highlighted the case of one patient who received the heart of a man killed by a gunshot to the face who, post-operatively, reported having persistent dreams in which he saw hot flashes of light directly on his face.
The researchers also documented what they described a case of “cell memory” in a woman – a former professional dancer – who received the heart of an eighteen-year-old male who died in a motorcycle accident. They reported that sometime after the transplant, the woman developed cravings for beer and chicken nuggets and had recurring dreams about a man she named “Tim L”.
She subsequently discovered, after searching through obituaries and eventually tracking down his family, that her donor was, in fact, called Tim and that he had a passion for the same food and drink that she craved following her transplant. Reportedly, her daughter even told her that she began to walk more like a man.
Yet another authoritative report “Heart Transplant, Personality Transplants”, by clinical psychiatrist Thomas R Verny, the author of the book Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness and Our Bodies, stated: “The heart is not only a pump but a centre of feeling, memory and personality”. Key phrases in the report jumped off the page at Edwin, each reinforcing his conviction that following his transplant, Fisher was no longer the racist pariah.
Some of the key sentences and phrases were: “the heart, like the nervous system, possesses the properties of memory and adaptation”, “the heart acts as a synchronisation force within the body, a key carrier of emotional information as well as other personality keys” and “sensitive transplant patients may evidence personality changes that parallel the experiences, likes, dislikes and temperament of their donors”.
In all his many years of reporting advances and developments in the world of health and medicine, Edwin learned that it was always prudent to be sceptical and questioning. He had come across several unscrupulous practitioners, cranks and charlatans who claimed so-called miracle cures for everything from cancer to alopecia, arthritis to erectile dysfunction. They were, at best, simply worthless claims that could be dismissed but, at worst, they could be dangerous and life-threatening.
For Edwin, the concept of cell memory transference following a heart transplant was entirely logical and supported by orthodox scientific research. In Fisher’s case, he felt that it was perfectly reasonable and rational to conclude that his new heart had obliterated all the hateful and malignant thoughts from his mind that had been implanted by his father – leaving him with the untarnished brain with which he was born.
So, armed with this wealth of convincing data and the anecdotal “evidence” from Sylvia Hartshorne, Edwin felt ready to approach the hospital transplant team for a comment.
‘Christ almighty. A swastika tattoo, you say. Bloody hell. Great story,’ said Ross, using, as he often did, the name of the Lord Jesus as an expression of surprise with no intent of religious offence.
‘It is a good story, I know, but we cannot attribute it to the hospital and they have asked me not to use it at all, if possible – at least not yet.’
‘Can we not just attribute it to a hospital spokesman?’ asked Ross.
Edwin explained, ‘They wouldn’t be happy with that, Ross. There’s only a handful of people who would have seen the tattoo and Fisher would know who they are. And, of course, he will have to go back there again for another check-up before too long. Ross, they do recognise that it is newsworthy but have specifically asked us to keep it on file until such time as it emerges from another source… as I am sure it will before long.’
‘OK, but don’t kick it into the long grass. I’d like to think that we will be able to carry a piece about it before too long. Keep me posted.’
‘I will, yes.’
*
That opportunity came quite unexpectedly only a few weeks later. It was a bright October day with the midday temperature in the upper teens, and Edwin was about to go out to buy a birthday card for his wife during his lunch break, when his office phone rang.
‘Newsroom, can I help you?’ he said cheerily.
‘Am I speaking to Edwin Benn?’ asked a woman with a Lancashire accent.
‘You are, yes.’
‘You don’t know me, Mr Benn, but I felt I had to call you. My name’s Sylvia Hartshorne. I’m the licensee at The Kettledrum Tavern, Jim Fisher’s local – you’re the reporter who has been writing all these stories about his heart swap, aren’t you?’ she began.
‘Yes, you are right. That’s me,’ said Edwin, pricking up his ears in anticipation. ‘I think I know your pub… I seem to remember I once came in to warm up after I’d been covering a story about a blizzard that blocked the roads, leaving drivers stranded. Anyway, how can I help you?’
When he picked up the handset, Edwin had expected it would be something of little consequence that would take only a minute or so of his time, but when he realised that it was about James Karl Fisher, he sat down at his desk, flicked open his spiral notebook and prepared to give his caller his full and undivided attention. Lunch and the greeting card would have to wait.
‘May I ask how you know him?’ asked Edwin directly, half expecting that as the landlady of Fisher’s local, she could well be a sympathiser with his odious racist views and would be ringing to complain about something he had written.
But he couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘I’ve known Jim Fisher for donkey’s years, ever since he moved over here from Liverpool,’ she said. ‘But I never really knew anything about his past or what sort of a bloke he was until I read those articles you wrote in the paper after he had his heart transplant.
‘He used to come in the pub several nights a week and one night, after I had read your article about his crimes and prison sentences, I plucked up the courage to tell him what I thought of him. When he’d had a few pints, he used to tell me that he fancied me and say that my late husband was a really lucky guy. I never felt that he would threaten me or get nasty, especially as there were always lots of other people around.
‘I suppose I noticed things over the years that made me think he was a bit of a racist, but he never really caused any bother so I just tended to ignore it.’
Edwin interjected, ‘What sort of things did you notice, Sylvia – is it OK to call you Sylvia?’
‘Yes, no problem. What did I notice? Well, I always noticed that he would move away if any Black people ever came in – which, to be honest, was not very often. Then there was one occasion I remember in particular when a Jewish couple from Rochdale had their wedding reception at the pub and he just got up and buggered off home.
‘When he next came in I had a big row with him. I told him that I’d prefer anyone to a horrible neo-Nazi like him and his cronies and, for a time after that, he just stopped coming in and I thought that I had seen the last of him.’
Edwin sensed there was a big news story waiting in the wings and felt a number of questions queuing up to be asked.
‘Do I take it then that he has now come back and is one of your regulars again?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. He started coming in on the odd occasion but he’s now in the pub two or three nights a week – and during the day as well – mostly on his own but sometimes with some of his old mates from the gym.’
Edwin asked another direct question. ‘Do they ever cause you any problems?’
‘Not really. There’s been the odd time when I have had to tell them I’d have to ban them if they didn’t stop making racist comments but for a long time now he’s behaved himself – most noticeably since my husband, Laurie, died about eighteen months ago.’
‘Why do you think that is – I mean since your husband died?’
‘Well, he always told me he fancied me when Laurie was alive, but after he died he must have thought that he was in with a real chance and I did go out with him for a meal on a couple of occasions. He also took me to the Grand National at Aintree and once to the races at York. He could be quite good company and was certainly always very generous.’
Edwin was intrigued by her anecdotes but was not sure why she had called him. ‘So, you obviously got to know him pretty well. But has something now happened that—’
Sylvia interrupted. ‘I know what you’re going to say – you want to know why I called you. Well, let me tell you. I think you will find it very interesting.’
‘Go on, I am most interested,’ said Edwin, his ballpoint poised to record her comments in shorthand. He had abandoned the idea of finding a birthday card for his wife.
Sylvia took a deep breath before continuing, ‘May I call you Edwin?’
‘Yes, of course, you can.’
‘Well, Edwin, he’s now just not the same bloke. Since his transplant, he has been a completely changed man. I don’t really know how to describe it. He’s like one of those people who go off on pilgrimages to Lourdes and say they have seen a vision. I’m not a religious person but it’s like he had some sort of revelation, seen the light. He’s certainly not the same person he was, that’s for sure.’
‘Sounds like you’re describing some sort of biblical epiphany,’ said Edwin.
‘I don’t know what that is but, without any exaggeration, it’s like the nasty old devil I remember of old has walked back into the pub and become some sort of saint, certainly a Mr Nice Guy. It’s almost like he has had a new brain as well as a new heart.’
‘What sort of changes have you noticed, Sylvia?’
‘It’s difficult to know where to start, to be honest – he just behaves differently, even looks different, less aggressive, less angry. He’s altogether more relaxed, more tolerant of people, never makes any racist comments and he now doesn’t seem to hang about with all his hangers-on any longer. In fact, I’m told that he’s sold the gym where they all used to hang out.’
‘That is all certainly very interesting – quite an amazing, miraculous transformation from the Jim Fisher of old. What do you think has brought about this dramatic change in him?’ Edwin asked.
Sylvia paused to consider her answer. ‘In my mind, I have no doubt that it was the transplant. I’m sure of it. It just cannot be anything else. I’m not a medical expert but it just has to be his new heart. It’s changed him into a new person.’
Journalistically, Edwin realised that this was potential dynamite. James Karl Fisher, it seemed, had not only had a change of heart anatomically but had also undergone a change of heart psychologically and emotionally. This was big news.
He quizzed Sylvia for more details. ‘Are there any particular, practical changes that you have noticed?’
‘There are, yes. For a start, he’s having all his tattoos removed – it’s costing him a fortune by all accounts. I don’t know whether you know or not but when he first heard that his heart donor was a Jewish person, he had a swastika tattooed over his heart – which I had to tell him was a bloody stupid, horrible thing to do.’
‘As it happened, I did know about the swastika… but you say it’s now gone as well as the rest of his racist tattoos. Obviously, something has dramatically changed the way he thinks and you could well be right, that it was having someone else’s heart. I’ll be checking that out with the medics, for sure, in due course.’
‘What do you think, Edwin? Do you think that someone’s whole personality can change after they’ve had a heart transplant? Would it just be a physical thing or psychological, or maybe a combination of both?’
‘To be honest, I just don’t know. It’s something that I have never come across before but I can well believe that it’s a very real possibility. I will most certainly find out.’
Edwin glanced up at the office wall clock and realised that he would have to be content with a sandwich lunch from the canteen and that the birthday card for his wife would have to wait until the following day.
‘Is there anything else, Sylvia, you’ve noticed in particular about the way he’s changed?’ he asked.
‘Well, apart from the fact that I no longer hear him slagging off “Blacks, Jews and Pakis”, as he used to call them, he seems to have taken on some new interests – things that he never really had an interest in before.’
‘Such as?’
‘He regularly plays chess with one of our regulars who comes in two or times a week, on a couple or more occasions he’s joined in on our karaoke night which he never did before his transplant and he told me that he’s started tracing his family history on the Internet. He didn’t do any of those things before his transplant,’ said Sylvia.
‘Fascinating, really fascinating. I’m going to be looking into all this. There’s every possibility that the transplant team at the hospital may have come across this type of phenomenon before. I’ll certainly be asking them about that – and if they’ve noticed any changes in Fisher, of course.’
Sylvia added, ‘At first I thought that it was probably my imagination but it definitely isn’t. He just isn’t the same person as he was. In fact, I have never seen such a big change in anyone as I have with Jim Fisher.’
Edwin took note of her contact details and promised to make contact with her again should he glean any relevant medical information. They agreed to keep in touch and then said their goodbyes.
‘Sounded like an interesting one. It’s about our neo-Nazi transplant friend, I gather,’ said a newsroom colleague, Niall, who was sitting only a few feet away and had picked up the thread of the conversation.
‘It was, yes,’ confirmed Edwin. ‘It could be very interesting, to say the least. Could be a case of sinner turns saint after heart swap… but right now I’m interested in something to eat and a mug of sweet tea.’
He had planned to go to the office canteen but instead started thumbing through his notes, marking key sections with asterisks in the margin. As he did so, he beckoned one of the messenger boys and gave him some coins.
‘Can you go and get me a chicken mayo sandwich, a bag of plain crisps and a mug of tea,’ he asked.
Had Marcus Lieberman’s donor heart given Fisher much more than a new lease of life? Was it possible that psychosomatically he had also been given a completely new personality? Could he even have acquired some of the traits and characteristics of his donor? Was it a phenomenon known to medical science?
It opened up an exciting and fascinating area of research for Edwin and he could not wait to get started.
As a medical journalist, he knew that anatomically the heart was simply a four-chambered pump that circulated blood around the body. But he also knew that since the dawn of civilisation, it was regarded as the seat of mankind’s emotions, his psyche, his spirituality – his very heart and soul.
Be it in the classical literature of Ancient Greece or Rome, the works of the great poets, romantic Victorian novels or even the language of contemporary pop culture and music, the heart is seen as the barometer of human emotion that had given rise to a lexicon of idioms and phrases in everyday common English usage.
People, for example, could “find it in their heart”, they could “follow one’s heart” or “speak from the heart”. Someone who was well-intended had “their heart in the right place”. People could “get to the heart of the matter” or wish for something or someone “with their heart’s desire”.
They could express their true feelings in their “heart of hearts” or their “heart could sink” if they became discouraged or disappointed. They could “open their hearts”, act out of the “goodness of their hearts”, “put their heart into something” or, at times of despair and distress, “pour out their heart and soul”.
James Karl Fisher, it seemed, was having a change of heart. Surgically, it was an anatomical fact. Another man’s heart was now beating inside his chest. Psychologically and emotionally, it now seemed that he was also undergoing an equally impactful personality change.
An initial trawl through the wealth of academic research papers on the subject confirmed that it was a well-recognised, well-documented phenomenon. References to clinical studies around the globe confirmed that a heart transplant could lead to significant, permanent changes in a recipient’s personality caused not only by emotional triggers but also by real physiological changes.
Edwin was fascinated to see that reports published in academic journals around the world, referred to the role of “cellular memory”, of “intracardiac neurological memory” and “memory transfer” – of memory transmitted from one individual to another through the heart nerve cells.
His many years as a medical journalist had taught him to recognise the difference between serious peer-reviewed reports and fanciful, unsubstantiated claims written by cranks and charlatans. The ones he was now seeing with respect to heart transplantation were not in the dangerous kite-flying category but authoritative papers based on balanced research conducted by health professionals. They stressed that whilst the majority of heart transplant recipients did not experience any personality change post-surgery, one in five reported that they did experience changes and a percentage of those reported “drastic changes”.
It seemed clear to Edwin, based on all the information he had been given about Fisher’s “reincarnation”, that he was one of those for whom the transplant had, indeed, resulted in radical changes. But it was certainly not without precedent.
According to the wealth of authenticated medical and scientific research that Edwin was able to identify via the Internet, Fisher was far from unique.
One of the largest studies of heart transplant recipients, conducted by Paul Pearsall, Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek at the University of Hawaii and published in the journal of Integrative Medicine, noted post-operative changes in their preference for certain foods, music, art, career choices, sensory experiences and even changes in their sexual and recreational preferences.
It highlighted the case of one patient who received the heart of a man killed by a gunshot to the face who, post-operatively, reported having persistent dreams in which he saw hot flashes of light directly on his face.
The researchers also documented what they described a case of “cell memory” in a woman – a former professional dancer – who received the heart of an eighteen-year-old male who died in a motorcycle accident. They reported that sometime after the transplant, the woman developed cravings for beer and chicken nuggets and had recurring dreams about a man she named “Tim L”.
She subsequently discovered, after searching through obituaries and eventually tracking down his family, that her donor was, in fact, called Tim and that he had a passion for the same food and drink that she craved following her transplant. Reportedly, her daughter even told her that she began to walk more like a man.
Yet another authoritative report “Heart Transplant, Personality Transplants”, by clinical psychiatrist Thomas R Verny, the author of the book Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness and Our Bodies, stated: “The heart is not only a pump but a centre of feeling, memory and personality”. Key phrases in the report jumped off the page at Edwin, each reinforcing his conviction that following his transplant, Fisher was no longer the racist pariah.
Some of the key sentences and phrases were: “the heart, like the nervous system, possesses the properties of memory and adaptation”, “the heart acts as a synchronisation force within the body, a key carrier of emotional information as well as other personality keys” and “sensitive transplant patients may evidence personality changes that parallel the experiences, likes, dislikes and temperament of their donors”.
In all his many years of reporting advances and developments in the world of health and medicine, Edwin learned that it was always prudent to be sceptical and questioning. He had come across several unscrupulous practitioners, cranks and charlatans who claimed so-called miracle cures for everything from cancer to alopecia, arthritis to erectile dysfunction. They were, at best, simply worthless claims that could be dismissed but, at worst, they could be dangerous and life-threatening.
For Edwin, the concept of cell memory transference following a heart transplant was entirely logical and supported by orthodox scientific research. In Fisher’s case, he felt that it was perfectly reasonable and rational to conclude that his new heart had obliterated all the hateful and malignant thoughts from his mind that had been implanted by his father – leaving him with the untarnished brain with which he was born.
So, armed with this wealth of convincing data and the anecdotal “evidence” from Sylvia Hartshorne, Edwin felt ready to approach the hospital transplant team for a comment.
