Hands-on journalism Analysis/Humor A team of Lyon, France, microsurgeons performed the first double hand transplant on January 15, 2000. That's news, at least I think it is, even though the story hardly made a ripple in the U.S. The Lyon team is the same one that operated on Clint Hallam in September 1998 in the first successful transplant of a single hand. In January 1999, however, a team of U.S. surgeons in Louisville, Kentucky, duplicated the feat. The hand operation now, as you may guess, is getting to be old hat. All the same, hats off to the microsurgeons and boo to the shoddy journalists following their accomplishments. The most contentious point seems to be the exact time the transplant subjects -- Hallam and Scott -- actually lost their original limbs. News pages seem divided between 1984 and 1989 for Clint Hallam and appear to be really confused about Matthew Scott. CNN Interactive suggests Scott lost his hand in 1995. (Five years ago, he was playing with firecrackers? The guy's thirty-seven.) Everybody else says it was 1985. CNN also refers to New Zealander Clint Hallam as the "New England" man. Makes you wonder whether journalists should ever drink. Finally, most publications spell the lead surgeon in the Louisville operation as Breidenbach. CNN spells it Breidenback. While I was researching the current story -- discovered, incidentally, on the website of Le Monde -- I noticed that most stories related the Clint Hallam operation, some addressed the Louisville graft, and still others monitored the alleged wrongdoings of Hallam. Hallam was convicted of marketing-fraud in New Zealand and currently stands accused of embezzling funds from an association for transplant recipients. Then, there's an odd nationalistic twist. The CNN headline, referring to the second hand transplant, reads "U.S. doctors perform first hand transplant surgery." Okay, technically right, but if you were Jo Ann Maple from Minneapolis, would you know enough to grasp that CNN was referring to the first American operation and the second hand transplant? Also, I really think Tabloid.com deserves a big hand for the headline: "Hand Transplant Weirdo Runs from the Law." The piece concludes glibly about the French surgeons: "Some have suspected that, being French, they wanted to beat out a team of U.S. doctors." Now I'm waiting for the first head transplant. Odds are, the candidate will be a journalist. January 19, 2000