Who Owns Barney Clarks Legacy?
Who Owns Barney Clark’e Legacy? Questions about release of a film on his heart surgery “Please, please, work this time!” begged Dr. William DeVries. He had just snapped into place the polyurethane left ventricle of a new heart for his patient. The second attempt to install a ventricle worked, and Barney Clark made history by becoming the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart. The operation that gave Clark a precarious hold on life (he was to die 112 days later of multiorgan system failure) was videotaped as part of a documentary on his struggle to survive. Now a complex legal and ethical debate is going on over the question of whether or not that tape should be shown. At issue, in essence, is who owns the legacy of Barney Clark. The program was made at a cost of $150,000 by KUED-TV, the public television station of the University of Utah, where the operation took place. The Clark family cooperated on the project, because, it says, it believed the surgery segment would be
