Apparently, this really did happen. In the very early morning hours of Jan. 23, 1964, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson Mississippi, Dr. James Hardy really did transplant the heart of a chimpanzee into a dying man. The heart beat for about an hour and the man, who had been comatose, never regained consciousness.Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart, Donald McRae, 2006, page 125.
https://books.google.com/books?id=2...r, Hardy had completed his stitching"&f=false
' . . . The quivering did not settle into a steady beat, and so Hardy, the sweat rolling down him, used a defibrillator to shock the chimpanzee heart. It immediately worked and, in Hardy's words, "a forceful beat was restored and supported a blood pressure of 90 to 100 mmHg."
'They stood around and watched, unsure whether or not they were witnessing a miracle or an aberration. "At least we're in business," Hardy said.
'They did not remain in the transplant business too much longer. After an hour the heart, which was far too small for the man it was meant to support, simply stopped. . . '
Less than a year earlier, Dr. Hardy had performed the first lung transplant in human history. That lung patient had lived for about nineteen days.
Might I call the 1964 chimp-to-human transplant a discovered POD? ? It really happened, but it's not well known about.
Last edited: