Surgery: The Ultimate Operation

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For weeks, and months, and even years, surgical teams at more than 20 medical centers around the world have been standing ready to make the first transplant of a heart from one human being to another. What they have been waiting for is the simultaneous arrival of two patients with compatible blood types—one doomed to die of some disease that has not involved his heart, and a second doomed to die of incurable, irreversible heart disease.

Last week, in two hospitals separated by almost 8,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean, the historic...

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