MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewIf you come to Ticker expecting a story about the triumph of man over nature, though, you will be disappointed. The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve a permanent artificial heart ... her narrow focus hampers any real exploration of the ethical limits of innovation. In casting Cooley, Frazier and other artificial heart evangelists as her protagonists, she has readers follow them beating long odds and proving naysayers wrong. They emerge as heroes, if slightly flawed ones ... Other patients come and go in Ticker, and I found myself wishing to know more about how they felt about their experimental surgeries. (The widow of the man who received Cooley’s stolen artificial heart, for example, later filed a medical malpractice suit — a fact Swartz glosses over in a paragraph).
