It’s Called Giving From The Heart

This may be the ultimate in recycling: Lift the used pacemaker out of a dead body and reinstall it in a live one.

The Spokane-based Cremation Society of Washington recycled its first six pacemakers last week, sending them to the Heart Too Heart Program in Billings, Mont. The pacemakers will be checked out, refurbished and donated to Third World countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

There, the pacemakers will be replanted, if that’s the proper word, into heart patients who can’t afford $10,000 for a new one.

The whole thing sounds like “reduce, reuse and recycle” taken to the extreme. But it actually makes as much sense as organ donation and possibly more: At least when you take a pacemaker out of a corpse, it’s still humming along.

Also, the old pacemakers were going to waste. Shelley Perkins of the Cremation Society of Washington explained that pacemakers always have been removed from bodies before cremation since a pacemaker can explode at high temperatures. Previously, they were discarded as medical waste.

The Heart Too Heart Program was begun two years ago and now is recycling nearly 100 pacemakers a month from all around the country. The Cremation Society of Washington is the first Eastern Washington group to participate. Authorization is obtained from the deceased’s family.

But does anybody really want to risk his heartbeat on a pre-owned pacemaker? Especially one from an owner who died, which does not exactly constitute an endorsement?

According to Perkins, the pacemakers are checked out thoroughly and only the reliable ones are reused. A pacemaker, like a Timex, apparently can take a licking and keep on ticking.

, DataTimes