"He knows that machine is his mortality": old and new social and cultural patterns in the clinical trial of the AbioCor artificial heart.

University of Pennsylvania, USA. rcfox@ssc.upenn.edu

The clinical trial of the AbioCor artificial heart, initiated in July 2001 and still in process, has taken place within a matrix of social and cultural patterns that are both "old" and new. The old patterns--those that have accompanied previous clinical trials of other vital artificial organs and transplantation in the United States--include "experiment perilous," and courage, heroism, and pioneering themes; "right stuff" motifs; "Americana" symbols; allusions to the meaning of the human heart; connections with a for-profit corporation; and the occurrence of moratoriums. New patterns--those more particular and distinctive to the AbioCor trial--involve the restrictions imposed on releasing information about the post-operative clinical status of the implant recipients; the quasi-institutionalization of a patient advocacy system to represent patient-subjects and their families; and the "crises of success" that were encountered when several of the AbioCor recipients survived longer than expected. In certain instances, old and new patterns have been combined--for example, in some of the idiosyncratic features of the AbioCor-associated lawsuit that has resulted in part from the problem of the "therapeutic misconception," the belief that an experimental intervention is actually intended to be a treatment.

PMID: 15061170 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]