Harvard and B.U. Doctors Implement Transplant Law

Harvard and Boston University Medical School surgeons will help implement a new law this week that represents a major new breakthrough for heart, kidney, and liver transplant cases.

The surgeons will be distributing five local forms to all eastern Massachusetts hospitals. The forms, drefated by William J. Curran, Visiting Professor of Health Law, are the means for activating the new Massachusetts anatomical donations law.

The law enables a person, without the consent of next of kin, to bequeath parts or the whole of his body for research and transplant use. It represents three years of legislative work by the surgeons. It represents, too, a major breakthrough for heart, kidney, and liver transplant patients.

The law is finally coming up to date with medical surgery," Dr. Curran said. "And to the bones of law we are adding the flesh of form, the machinery that will make it work."

Should a person decide to donate his organs to a hospital or medical school, he and his physician will complete the five forms. They include his statement of donation; the physican's statement ("... the donor was of sound mind and not under the influence of narcotic drugs..."); a statement by next of kin; provisions for burial; and a reference to the hospital or medical school receiving the organs. The donor must be twenty-one.

Properly registered he will receive a small laminated card to be carried like a driver's license. The card allows a doctor to remove legally the person's organs within minutes after death. For the transplant of kidneys, livers, and hearts, this "quick-time" is essential.

Curran emphasized that the form-card-operation system does not interfere with funerals and autopsies. In the case of homicide victims, a coroner would be called before the surgery. Final decisions in these cases, he said, would be left to the Commonwealth or next of kin.

Several Exceptions

There will be several cases where the new law won't apply. If the laminated card is lost, if the patient develops cancer or becomes too old, the doctor can't operate.

Curran is working with the American Bar Association's Committee on Uniform State Laws to introduce the form-card operation system nationally. So far, twenty states have adopted similar measures. "But none," Curran emphasized, "seems more complete than the Massachusetts law."