AHC: Dr. James Hardy gets credit for first heart transplant (1964).

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. . . '
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.

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.
 
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page 126:

' . . . The day after the transplant, on January 24, an Associated Press story had been splashed across the nation's newspapers. Hardy had shuddered to read the opening sentences, which claimed that "Surgeons took the heart from a dead man, revived it and transplanted it into the chest of a man dying . . . '
(1) Hardy's team didn't know if they were going to use a human donor or a chimp until pretty much the last minute. And part of this came from the fact that the prominent definition of death at the time was heart-death, and not brain-death.

(2) Institutions buff uncomfortable truths, almost by their very nature. The hospital's director of public information included some cagey statement of the sort "the dimensions of the only available donor." Shit. With statements like that, no wonder the whole thing became a muddled mess.
 
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Transplanting from random donors (or cross-species!!!!) is a dead end. Especially with anti-rejection drugs still in their infancy. Barnard's team a few years later really is, IMO, the beginnings of heart transplants - while his first patient died (18?) days later, it was from pneumonia, not e.g. rejection.

Sort of like - who was the first American in space? Who remembers Alan Shepard?
 
Sort of like - who was the first American in space? Who remembers Alan Shepard?
Point well taken. Not near as well remembered as John Glen. But I think Al Shepard did get a big parade, he did get something.

Maybe if the whole public relations regarding this almost successful transplant attempt had been more straightforward. If they had said, it was a last desperate attempt, we had the family fully onboard, etc.
 
Spin doctors would have preferred the first heart transplant in a progressive Southern American state than apartheid-era South Africa.
 
"Yes Mississippi was, but Mississippi is [hopeful uptick in voice!]"

This is from a sports documentary. :)
 
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https://www.umc.edu/News_and_Public...05_Paving_the_way_for_transplant_history.aspx

Paving the way for transplant history

Fifty years ago last week, Dr. James Hardy and a surgical team at UMMC performed a first: transplanting a chimpanzee heart into a human - Boyd Rush, a retired upholsterer in Hattiesburg. Though controversial, the operation on Jan. 23, 1964 proved the concept and technology, which led to the world’s first human-to-human transplant on Dec. 3, 1967, in South Africa.
So, apparently, yeah, it really did happen.
 
Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart, page 124.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2... Mrs. J. H. Thompson, agreed to sign"&f=false

' . . . Rush's sister, Mrs. J. H. Thompson, agreed to sign the consent form, which confirmed that: "I agree to the insertion of a suitable heart transplant if such should be available at the time. I further understand that hundreds of heart transplants have been performed in laboratories throughout the world but that any heart transplant would represent the initial transplant in man." . . . '
They are being less honest with the family than they could be. That need to tell the man's sister that their backup plan is the heart of a chimpanzee.

She might go for it. She might not, either for reasons they can well understand, or reasons they can't understand so easily. I think they still need to inform and ask.

And they really shouldn't emphasize this business of hundreds of transplants in labs. It's bad to hold out false hope to the family. They need to say they will do their best, and they just don't know, this is very much experimental. That's what they need to put into legalese.
 
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http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/21/local/me-hardy21

Obituaries
Dr. James Hardy, 84; First Heart Transplant Surgeon
February 21, 2003 | Associated Press

' . . . Hardy headed teams that did three pioneering operations: the first human lung transplant in 1963; the first animal-to-human heart transplant in 1964; and a double lung transplant that left the heart in place in 1987. . . '
Yes, Dr. James Hardy was a respected physician and surgeon.
 
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But could this be detrimental? A stretch but could there be a backlash against transplants and "science gone mad" like with stem cells?
possible, I imagine. OTOH, the early '60s were still in the 'Science can do no wrong' period, although at the end of it.

Also, cross-species transplants are a total dead end* (even if the heart hadn't been too small). My guess is the guy gets censured for unethical medicine, if it becomes widely known.

----
*with anything like '60s tech. Modern techniques of using foreign organs as a structural base, killing the foreign cells and colonizing the remaining structure with human cells (preferably the patient's), may have a future. Transplanting pig or chimp or baboon organs directly exposed to the immune system? Nope.
 
But could this be detrimental? A stretch but could there be a backlash against transplants and "science gone mad" like with stem cells?
Per above excerpt from Every Second Counts (p. 126), it was published nationwide by AP in very inaccurate form and the University of Mississippi Medical Center was in the embarrassing position of having to issue a correction.

Plus, about two weeks later, James Hardy attended the Sixth International Transplantation Conference in New York and could feel the "icy disdain."

https://books.google.com/books?id=2...page&q="Hardy withdrew from the race"&f=false

page 127:

' . . . Hardy withdrew from the race. "I had noted," he said, "that when one loses his academic post, for whatever reason, he is not likely to get another one of comparable significance. I decided to wait until Shumway and his group transplanted a heart in man." . . . '
Which is kind of a shame, for Hardy did the first open-heart surgery in Mississippi, as well as the first human lung transplant ever. And because he lived and practiced in Mississippi, Dr. Hardy "had not received one out-of-state application for a surgical residency in years" (p. 122).
 
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*with anything like '60s tech. Modern techniques of using foreign organs as a structural base, killing the foreign cells and colonizing the remaining structure with human cells (preferably the patient's), may have a future. Transplanting pig or chimp or baboon organs directly exposed to the immune system? Nope.
As I understand, proteins interacting in various ways and ocassionally unfolding and re-folding provides most of the dance which makes life possible. Although I should say I have a grand total of two college biology classes! plus some reading on my own.

Does anyone remember "Baby Fae" from Oct. and Nov. '84?

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-16/news/mn-15021_1_baby-fae

" . . . The infant was born Oct. 14, 1984, in Barstow with an almost invariably fatal heart disease called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. She received a baboon heart at Loma Linda on Oct. 26, the first infant . . . "
This little baby lived 20 and a half days after the transplant, which is maybe a miracle in its own right. At the time, I remember there was some discussion whether the baboon heart could serve as a bridge and buy additional time while they looked for a human heart.

I also have a fair amount of open-mindedness to the whole animal rights and animal welfare side of the discussion.

But in general, I think it's better to do something rather than nothing as long as the patient and family are dealt with honestly. For example, we will do our best but that's all we can promise.

For the human side, here's a People magazine article where the two parents talk about their lives, the pregnancy, finding out their daughter is sick, and agreeing to the transplant.
T is Teresa.
H is Howard.
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20089289,00.html
 
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Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart, page 123:

https://books.google.com/books?id=2...wer left leg was black with gangrene"&f=false

' . . . His lower left leg was black with gangrene, his face mottle with blood clots. Both conditions had been caused by his heart's inability to pump enough blood . . . Boyd Rush . . . was in a comatose state with only a faint pulse. . . '
I think you've got to tell the sister and any other family: 'We will do our best. We may not be able to help your brother, but we will do our best . . . " And then the rest of it, you just have to have a real conversation. That is, you only plan the beginning of the conversation.

As a family member, I would at least worry, does he also have blood clots in his brain? And then, simply the coma by itself. Some people just never wake it. And this is what happened with Boyd. Even with the new heart which beat for 60 minutes or 90 minutes (sources vary), the man just never woke up.
 
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2nd heart transplant, patient Louis Washkansky, physician Christiaan Barnard, Dec. 3, 1967 (South Africa)

the one everyone knows about!!!

page 176:

https://books.google.com/books?id=2...ce, Barnard said without hesitation."&f=false

' . . . could barely understand Barnard when he explained the techniques and consequences of cardiac transplantation in his thick Afrikaans accent. All that stuck in her head was the answer he gave when she asked what chance Louis had of surviving such an operation.

'"An eighty-percent chance,' Barnard said without hesitation.

Ann could think only of the twenty-percent risk, and of the eerie operation, when Barnard left them. . . '
This is a serious screw-up on the part of Dr. Chris Barnard.

Hopefully, later that same day or the next day, he could tell Louis and Ann something to the effect that while he is confident as a surgeon, there's a lot more to the entire transplant procedure than just the surgery itself.
 
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2nd heart transplant, patient Louis Washkansky
https://books.google.com/books?id=2...t Louis would shed his own character"&f=false

'She was convinced that Louis would shed his own character and absorb the personality of the dead person whose heart they would give him. She hated the idea of waking up next to someone who looked like Louis but, because of his strange new heart, acted like someone she had never met before in her life.'
This is perhaps why it's a good idea for a patient to be able to talk with several different medical professionals. For example, if there had been a nurse with whom Mrs. Washkansky had a previous relationship. Such a nurse might have been able to tell her something to the effect, no, no, no, it's all the brain, all a person's thoughts, all a person's feelings and experiences, all the love a person has for someone else . . .

The previous relationship would have helped. [This book describes no such hospital employee. On many of her visits, Mrs. Washkansky was supported by one of a couple of sisters-in-law.]

Now, we might call Mrs. Ann Washkansky uneducated and superstitious. But for any of us, if someone were to present me with an idea completely out of the blue, who knows what might go through my mind? Probably should cut all of us a little slack.
 
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2nd heart transplant, Louis Washkansky

https://books.google.com/books?id=n...ed Barnard that he was a betting man"&f=false

page 190:

Washkansky reminded Barnard that he was a betting man. The doc's prediction of an eighty-percent chance of success translated into bookie's odds of four to one.

"The odds always change at the last minute," Washkansky reminded Barnard. "Are they moving my way—or against me?"

"Your way," Barnard said.

The orderly had begun to shave his stomach. "Tell Ann," Washkansky said to Barnard, "it's in the bag."
So, Dr. Chris Barnard never recovered from and corrected his initial mistake of telling his patient 80%.

Ouch.

Yes, at the last minute, you may need to give the patient confidence. The accurate information needs to be given far ahead of time.

And this is probably also why the patient and family needs the opportunity to talk with a doctor not favor of doing the transplant but instead in favor of standing pat and using the best of convention medicine. And again, it's better for this conversation to be ahead of time if at all possible.
 
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1st heart transplant, patient Boyd Rush, physician James Hardy, Jan. 23, 1964 (Jackson, Mississippi)

1001.jpg

Dr. James D. Hardy

This seems to be a pretty good site which also includes references.

https://thechirurgeonsapprentice.co...p-the-surgeon-a-history-of-heart-transplants/
 
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