THE TODD DOSSIER: A DISQUIETING NOVEL ABOUT A CHANGE OF HEART.
By Collier H. Young '30. NewYork: Delacorte Press, 1969. 187 pp.$4.95.
Mr. Young seems to be among the first to appreciate the unlimited potential that heart transplantation has for the fiction writer. His novel, the plot of which involves premeditated murder of a heart donor by an elderly man who needs a new heart, is ingenious and engaging.
The central character is Hollis Todd. Rich, intelligent, ambitious and unscrupulous, Todd creates a complex plan to murder a former Olympic athlete for his strong, young heart. And the plan, despite its highly improbable nature, succeeds. Todd gets the new heart but his crime is found out by one of the surgeons who, in good faith, did the transplantation procedure. What happens then is for the reader to find out himself.
The author barely skirts the enormous moral issues heart transplantation involves and, in so doing, misses a great opportunity. He succeeds in turning out a light, highly readable, yarn. But the theme itself is crying for much more profound fictional treatment. The legal, social, and even the political implications of heart transplantation have, to date, been largely avoided by those who ought to be avidly and conscientiously probing them. The surgeons, whose obvious quest for priority and notoriety is anything but reassuring, are only just now beginning to admit the obvious: heart transplantation in human beings was introduced prematurely and for less than noble reasons. Their argument, that only by courageous gambles can science advance, is more defensive than convincing. The lawyers are reeling under the impact of the necessity for defining death, and therefore murder and manslaughter, more effectively. The sociologists and philosophers have yet to be heard from in depth.
As for the politicians, what, one wonders, would Hitler's attitude toward finding a supply of healthy hearts for use by ailing Herrenvolk have been, if the technique of transplantation had been available in his time? Even today, how outlandish is it to predict that categories of donors may one day be defined? Accident victims of course; then mental defectives with healthy hearts; then condemned murderers; and then, perhaps, political undesirables.
Existing legal precedent will not save us from such horrors. But a searcing examination of the relevant and pressing moral issues just might and, as matters now stand, a mature, gifted, sensitive writer of fiction is probably the man to do it. If Mr. Young sticks to the theme, he may, perhaps, consider tackling it.
All this aside, there are a few technical bloopers which is understandable enough. For example, if a woman wants to murder a strong young man by subtle means, she will get nowhere by sneaking up on him and, in a flash, injecting air into him with a hypodermic syringe. There are ways, but this isn't one of them. Some of the characters are stylized and shallow; and the changing sequence of testimony - the device used to tell the story - sometimes gets confusing.
But on the whole, The Todd Dossier is an entertaining evening's reading.
A cardiology specialist, Dr. Chapman Became Dean of the Dartmouth Medical Schoolin 1966. He was president of the AmericanHeart Association in 1964-65.
