Middle-aged woman given young man's heart; started behaving like him...

I was given a young man's heart - and started craving beer and Kentucky Fried Chicken. My daughter said I even walked like a man.

Yesterday, the Mail told the extraordinary story of how a heart transplant recipient in America committed suicide - just like the man whose heart he had received 12 years previously. In another extraordinary twist, it emerged that the recipient had also married the donor's former wife.

So can elements of a person's character - or even their soul - be transplanted along with a heart?

One woman who believes this to be the case is CLAIRE SYLVIA, a divorced mother of one.

She was 47 and dying from a disease called primary pulmonary hypertension when, in 1988, she had a pioneering heartlung transplant in America.

She was given the organs of an 18-year-old boy who had been killed in a motorcycle accident near his home in Maine.

Claire, a former professional dancer, then made an astonishing discovery: she seemed to be acquiring the characteristics, and cravings, of the donor.

Here, in an extract from her book A Change Of Heart, Claire tells her remarkable story...

During my final lucid moments before my heart-lung transplant, I was told that a medical team would soon be leaving to "harvest" the organs that would save my life.

My surgeon, Mr John Baldwin, would remain with me, ready to begin the operation as soon as he was notified that the donor's heart and lungs had been removed. But by this time I was far too groggy to focus on these details, which was probably just as well.

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