Word: damien
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Died. Father Damien Boulogne, 58, the Dominican priest who lived 523 days with a transplanted heart, a record second only to that of South Africa's Dr. Philip Blaiberg, who survived for 594 days; of as yet undetermined causes; in Paris. On May 12, 1968, Boulogne received the heart of a 39-year-old Paris customs officer, and within a few months had resumed a more or less normal life, working on a book and regularly celebrating Mass. His death came as a complete surprise to Jiis doctor, Charles Dubost, who was away lecturing at a Mexican university...
France's third heart-transplant patient is a man to whom the ethics and morality of the procedure are of more than usual concern. Father Damien Boulogne is a former professor of philosophy at Dominican seminaries. Two years ago, the priest had suffered a series of heart attacks that left him to tally disabled. Now 57, Father Damien got his new heart at the Hôpital Broussais-La Charité in Paris, where he is now recovering in sterile isolation. From there he wrote for La Vie Catholiqué an account of the soul-searching that preceded...
...Father Damien had no problems regarding the donor. "The donor," he wrote, "is in no way 'sacrificed' by the doctors. He has already been in a closed circuit [heart-lung machine] for days, and is therefore already dead (flat electroencephalogram, etc.). His survival is artificial. So, no problem...
...Father Damien concerned about personality changes as a result of receiving a new heart. He cited the Vatican's position that the heart is nothing but a pump-"an admirable pump, but 'stupid,' a machine having its own circuit...
...Father Damien's own resolution of the risks was in favor of the transplant, which he received May 12. Last week, building himself up on a gourmand's menu of pepper steak and Beaujolais, with a midnight snack of lamb chops among his five daily meals, he was busy correcting the proofs of his latest work-on St. Thomas Aquinas, who, says Father Damien, also believed that individual conscience, in individual circumstance, could and must override other rules in order to refer to the unwritten...