He had been dauntlessly enthusiastic over the prospect of receiving an artificial heart. "If you get it in right," Jack Burcham, a former railroad engineer, promised Implant Surgeon William DeVries, "I'll make it work." Getting it in right proved to be just the first of many difficulties faced by doctor and patient at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville. The cheerful father of four from Leroy, Ill., never really recovered from the initial surgery. Last week, just ten days after becoming the fifth and oldest human recipient of the Jarvik-7 heart, Burcham died, at 62. As DeVries later admitted, it was not...
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