Head man shock

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS

The condition of Doctor Cannibal Barnyard, the South African surgeon and male model who lost his head during a public relations opera- tion in Cape Town last January, has continued to cause widespread concern in medical circles this week. After the operation, it will be re- membered, Dr Barnyard announced his inten- tion, in medical terms, of 'sticking his neck out' and 'putting a good face on it.' His face is now believed to be showing signs of 'rejection,' and the South African government were said last night to be considering a new head-transplant operation on the doctor, emphasising their willingness to push on with their policy, what- ever the 'structural damage' to his body, in the interests of saving Dr Barnyard's face.

Although the public relations operation itself was not attempted until earlier this year— even the most progressive surgeons and poli- ticians had until then considered the risks in- volved too great—the idea of transplantation had been familiar in the Republic of South Africa for some years. Already thousands of 'Kaffir transplants,' involving the transplanting of negro volunteers from urban areas to specially selected patches of desert, had been performed with a measure of success. Others had been transplanted from their homes into barbed-wire enclosed compounds in order to provide a pool of potential head-donors. Still more advanced experiments were in progress, designed to prove that the bodies of animals and negroes were interchangeable, and that those of negroes in particular could be 'stored' almost indefinitely in 'immune' desert areas until they were required for use.

South Africa, it was generally agreed, was in by far the best position to carry out such experi- ments. Apart from the almost inexhaustible supply of volunteer 'guinea pigs,' techniques of racial disinfection, immunology and head sur- gery were a long way ahead of those employed both in the United States and Great Britain. There remained only one problem. Although the experiments had proved almost 100 per cent successful among whites—among negroes they were considered somewhat less than 100 per cent successful—all attempts to 'justify' these experiments abroad had met with im- mediate 'rejection.' Successful graft operations, it is true, had been carried out, but in general terms this rejection seemed universal and in- evitable.

It was at this point that Dr Barnyard came into the picture. It had been thought for some time that a public relations operation involv- ing transplants could be carried out in theory, but the practical problems were immense. First it was necessary to find a sufficiently attractive subject. Lung, liver, tonsil and bottom trans- plants were each in turn considered and dis- missed on the grounds that they did not have sufficient emotional appeal. Sex-change and re- juvenatory operations involving organ trans- plants were also discussed, but ultimately turned down on the grounds that they suggested a Scandinavian or even Teutonic discipline out of keeping with the image South Africa wished to project. Then, after weeks of discussion, the PR men and government hit the emotional jackpot: heart transplants.

The idea seemed exciting. But who should perform it? Examining the photographs of such

South African surgeons even minimally quali- fied to perform such a piece of sleight of hand the optimism of the PR men waned sharply.

Consisting for the most part of snaggle-toothed degenerates, advanced alcoholics and ex-Ger- man 'research scientists' from concentration camps, they presented both individually and collectively an image that was unlikely, in the

opinion of the PR team, to find favour with the

investors of the western world. A photograph of Dr Ignaz Frankenstein, for example, hang- ing his huge square head over the body of a patient and looking down with his unusually intense red-rimmed eyes, was considered basically unsuitable, and the black-eye-patched Dr H. B. Dracula, though reminiscent of General Dayan, was held by reason of his

distressingly humped back and the long steel hook which takes the place of his right hand to lack the attractive open-air gaiety the PR men wished to associate with South Africa in the public mind.

It was then that a member of the govern- ment recalled the name of Dr Barnyard, whom he had last seen winning the `Mijnheer Cape Town' swimsuit contest in a pair of eye-catching striped woollen knee-lengths with shoulder-

straps in 1947. In a trice Barnyard was sum- moned. Though no longer young, his bone structure and well-polished teeth appealed to.

most members of the board, and the decision was made within minutes. Heart transplant sur- gery, considered by cautious and timid re-

searchers abroad to require several more years of painstaking research before it could be, per-

formed on human beings, was crammed into a three-day crash course, leaving Barnyard dizzy and twitching with the impact and his surgery littered with dead dogs and negro volunteers. More important, a fortnight's in- tense training in microphone and television techniques brought him to the pitch of his form.

The rest of the story is well known. The sheer legerdemain of Barnyard's juggling with two still palpitating hearts, twitched at random from the twenty-five spare donors specially run over in Cape Town that morning, his con- vincing 'transplant' on the in fact untouched white patient, and his masterly handling of the world's press and television, all left his advisers breathless with admiration. The world tour which followed the hysteria of the communica- tions media, his warm reception by affluent operators in the medical profession in Britain and elSewhere, the heart-warming photographs of him embracing, in swift succession, a Bunny Girl, Miss Gina Lollobrigida and His Holiness the Pope, and, perhaps most winning of all, the trail of predictably fatal heart operations from Texas to Delhi, each with its fanfare of astute patriotism and money-grabbing fervour, con- vinced South Africa's PR men that the operation had been a total success, and that foreign in- vestment in South Africa was back on the road

to recovery. Now, with this latest setback, valuable assets—the political prestige of South Africa, the medical prestige of heart surgery and its accruing benefits in research grants— all hang once again in the balance. No sacrifice is too great if Barnyard's face can still be saved.vi And when it comes to human sacrifices le

medical profession is second to none.