Former U.S Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he once worried about how terrorists could use the implanted electrical device near his heart to end his life by making his doctor disable its wireless function as an assassination plot.
In his interview with CBS' " 60 Minutes," Cheney revealed that the doctors have replaced a defibrillator that implanted near his heart back in 2007. The device features irregular heartbeat detection and controls them by the use of electrical jolts.
Cheney and his cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, switched off the device's wireless feature as a precautionary measure against terrorists that would attempt to send his heart a deadly shock.
Several years later, Cheney saw the series episode Homeland of the Showtime which had a plot that included the same terrorist scenario he had envisioned to occur.
"I found it credible," Cheney tells "60 Minutes" in a segment to be aired Sunday. "I know from the experience we had, and the necessity for adjusting my own device, that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible."
Reiner also expressed how worried he was about Cheney during the 9/11 terrorist attack. Cheney was so stressed because of the incident in which the medical tests conducted that morning showed that he had increased levels of potassium in his blood. Dubbed as hyperkalemia, the condition could result to abnormal heart rhythms and cardiac arrest.
When Reiner was watching the news coverage of the terrorist events on television, he had thought about the possibility that the vice president could die that night because of hyperkalemia.
Cheney has a history of multiple heart malfunctions and has already suffered five heart attacks, the first of which occurred when he was 37. In 2012, he underwent a heart transplant at age 71.
Cheney and Reiner will also be promoting their book titled Heart: An American Medical Odyssey in CBS Sunday, 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT.
