For a guy who had his first heart attack at age 37--and two more before his 48th birthday--Dick Cheney has been pretty lucky. When the first one hit in 1978, doctors were learning new ways to treat and prevent heart attacks, which occur when the flow of oxygen-rich blood is partially interrupted and some of the heart tissue dies. He had his second and third in 1984 and 1988, during a decade of extraordinary progress in the medical and surgical treatment of heart disease. By the time he underwent quadruple-bypass surgery in August 1988, the procedure had become almost routine.
So...