University confronts dark history of a stolen heart

MORE than 50 years after his heart was taken and used in a landmark transplant without his or his family’s permission, Bruce Tucker has been formally honoured in a pair of vibrant murals outside a medical school auditorium in Virginia’s capital.

- THE WASHINGTON POST

In one, a larger-than-life heart holds up a stylised, detached heart.

In the other, a pensive Tucker wears a dark tie.

“Justice begins in the quiet places in the heart,” says one of several quotations from famed Americans that are incorporated into the murals at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Tucker’s heart has been described as “stolen” by his family and an author, who said surgeons eager to make history took what didn’t legally belong to them 24 hours after a fall landed him in the hospital. It was then transplanted into a white businessman.

A fraught moment to confront the racial inequities that run through American history, with the Trump administration officials dismantling federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Washington and pressuring universities to pull back from such efforts nationwide.

But the murals to memorialise Tucker, along with new scholarships in his name and a case study exploring the medical ethics of his case, are part of a deeper, years-long conversation involving the university, historians and members of the city’s African American community who rely on the medical center for lifesaving, often painful episodes.

“It’s difficult for us to talk about it, because it’s not a one-off,” said K Smith, a history professor at VCU.

He cited past instances of medical mistreatment of African Americans across the country. In 1932, around Tuskegee, Alabama, Black men with syphilis were made part of a decades-long government study showing them that knowledge of consent. Researchers failed to offer them penicillin then because the study required showing the men to suffer. At his own university, the remains of dozens of African American children, including some who were dissected in a medical school, were discarded in unmarked bodies used for anatomical instruction.