Pig’s heart and human folly

You had to climb about 300 steps to reach the main site of Dr.Baruah’s heart transplant centre. As a twenty two year old I remember thinking- how on earth does one reach here of one is a heart patient? ‘

As a rookie correspondent for  an investigative television news company, I had just been granted my first independent story- I travelled to Sonapur, an hour’s drive outside Guwahati, the capital of Assam, in North East India. An FRCS qualified and rather renowned Assamese heart surgeon had claimed to successfully perform a pig to human multiple organ transplantation, something that was still deemed unethical in the global medical community.

I was expected to not only find out the how and why, but also pursue the story as the multiple consequences unfolded for both doctor and patient- so at the level of a personal drama as well as a political story of ‘who now will bite a piece of this pie?’ it was the chance of a lifetime.

Assam is one of the seven of India’s north eastern states where the breakout of insurgency and the rise of  the separatist movement between the indigenous people and the policies of the Central government with regards to this oil rich state. Known for it’ s scenic beauty, wildlife sanctuaries like Kazirhanga, the Brahmaputra river and it’s refineries and tea estates, the insurgency crated a lot of trouble in this otherwise peace loving state.

Here I was though, not following insurgents but out to meet and interview a highly qualified doctor turned rogue. While I was still travelling there from Delhi , the patient died due to complications and the investigation that followed  unravelled right before my eyes.

While I am in complete agreement with the fact that Dr.Baruah performed an experiment way before it’s time and ought to have exercised more caution, the fact of the matter is that the team sent to investigate the crime by the police was highly under qualified to interrogate him. The infected organs   had been stored in a tub of formalin and the scribe taking notes did not even know the spelling of H-E-A-R-T or L-U-N-G-S, and was being coached by the local cop.

The patient belonged to a family that was below the poverty line and so when the patient’s condition was discovered, they were more than happy to undergo the experiment in exchange for not a  very large sum of money.

Apart from this, I did not expect to find that my sympathies actually lay with Dr.Dhaniram Baruah, as he sat, hour on hour tirelessly explaining his theory and his reason for doggedly  persisting with his theory. While his work may have been premature, but one has to credit him with the single minded focus he had to try and solve a problem that affects countless lives. From his point of view- perhaps more experiments were required and the State ought to be supporting his research by funding it, as opposed to penalizing him for his commitment to finding a common ground for inter-species organ transplant or Xeno-transplantation.

I did not expect to find a case that required very high level intervention by informed medical practitioners was being handled by people who were barely literate and ill equipped to pass any judgement on the ethical ramifications of the matter.

As he was led away after being sentenced to prison and dragged away by the cops, I managed to throw myself with my microphone close enough to get near him. Seeing me , he had grabbed my hand and said- ‘this is not the end- I will be back!’

Years later, as I sit down to watch surgical interns operating on pigs before they could practice on humans, on Grey’s Anatomy , my heart goes out to Christina Yang who gets emotionally attached to the pig, and the words of Dr.Baruah ring true in my ears.