You Really Can Give Someone Your Heart

admin 0 Comments February 16, 2025

Beverly Hurwitz’s newest novel peeks at transplant medicine

PARK CITY, Utah, Feb. 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — When a fatal car accident takes the life of a troubled teen, a devastated mother hopes that her child’s donated organs will save the lives of others. She never imagines the impact her deceased daughter’s DNA might have on the lives of the organ recipients.

The Tale of a Transplanted Heart tells the story of a brilliant infectious disease researcher who exhibits such significant personality changes following his successful heart transplant, that his physician wife can barely recognize the person her husband has become. His associates start to fear his capacity to manipulate dangerous viruses. As those around him try to understand what is happening to him, his transplant coordinators struggle to protect the identity of his deceased donor and her traumatized family.

Beverly Hurwitz’s fifth medical thriller explores the phenomenon of “cellular memory.” As transplant medicine has grown, increasing numbers of organ recipients are reporting the development of emotions, preferences and memories that are not their own. In 2023, there were about 250 transplant centers in the U.S. and almost 7,000 globally, and the experience of cellular memory appears to be cross-cultural.

The Tale of a Transplanted Heart also pulls a curtain back on infectious disease research, where scientists try to reprogram the DNA of lethal germs to make them less harmful. The heart recipient in this story explains that “humans were winning some battles against infectious diseases during the last century with drugs and vaccines. But in the ongoing war between man and microbes, the microbes may now be getting the upper hand, especially with people resisting vaccination.”

This novel also exposes the darker side of such research: unenforced lab regulations, ferocious competition for funding, a cutthroat race to produce the next blockbuster vaccine, lab accidents, and the potential creation of biologic weaponry. Readers might be left wondering whether the COVID pandemic arose spontaneously in nature, or was it created in a lab? And if COVID was a “designer virus,” was its escape accidental?

This novel also demonstrates what could happen to scientific research if competition for funding becomes even more intense. It glimpses at a future where funding for research will be limited and controlled by those whose interest in profits exceeds any interest in public health, and/or those who do understand the nature and applications of science, but seek to use it for questionable purposes. If you have the right germ, you can rule the world.

The Tale of a Transplanted Heart also whips up grievances about the business takeover of American health care. Set in a struggling rural hospital, just acquired by a for-profit corporation, the doctors in this story start to fear for their patients’ safety when new administrators ignore an increasing incidence of mysterious, life-threatening infections. While provoking the reader to wonder where lies the human soul, this story also exposes the escalating war between the hearts of health care providers and those of health care profiteers.

The Tale of a Transplanted Heart is available in paperback and kindle editions with reading samples, along with other books by Beverly Hurwitz M.D. at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=books+by+beverly+hurwitz

Contact:

Beverly Hurwitz M.D.

Author

435.901.2783

[email protected]