Surgery: The Ultimate Operation

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Wangensteen, noted as a driver of men, did not have to drive Barnard. He remembers that Barnard once operated on 49 dogs unsuccessfully in an attempt to learn about an intestinal abnormality in the newborn. "On the 50th time he succeeded; that was typical of his singleness of purpose," Wangensteen says. Outside the operating room, then as now, Barnard was tense, and paced with restless energy smoking other people's cigarettes. Inside the operating room Barnard kept himself tightly controlled, talked little, learned much. As a resident in surgery, he crowded into three years the work and experience for which most men take four or five, gaining himself Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in surgery to add to his Cape Town medical degree.

Back home, Dr. Barnard continued transplant research while practicing heart surgery and running a family. (With two children, he was best known in South Africa, until last week, as the father of a champion water skier, Deirdre, 17.) When he read of the dog onto which the Russians had transplanted a second head, he declared "There's nothing to it." He did two such operations himself, made movies of the dog operations—and took the movies with him as evidence when he went to Moscow to see whether he could learn anything from the Russians. In fact, he has learned more from former colleagues in the U.S. and from keeping up with their research.

Last week, after his brilliant operation, his surgical colleagues were full of praise. Said famed Heart Surgeon C. Walton Lillehei (Richard's eldest brother), newly named surgeon-in-chief at New York Hospital: "Barnard's achievement was a fantastic piece of surgery, no matter what happens later." Houston's Dr. Michael E. DeBakey (TIME cover, May 28, 1965) was just as enthusiastic: "This breaks the ice-it's a real breakthrough—a great achievement." South Africans, from Prime Minister Balthazar J. Vorster down, were understandably elated that a native son had brought such showers of applause upon their young republic. Ventricle Work. Despite the milestone quality of Barnard's accomplishment, his transplant was only the beginning of the road, not the end. There will continue to be, in the foreseeable future, many more potential heart recipients than donors, and the social problems—such as deciding who shall get a transplant—are even more forbiddingly complex than the surgical. The ultimate solution, DeBakey insists, is a completely artificial heart. He has been working on such devices for years. Walton Lillehei has a valveless, oxygen-powered device now ready for use as an external "heart assist," which he hopes can eventually be modified for implantation to do the work of both heart and lungs. DeBakey asserts, characteristically, that if the U.S. would spend as generously for this research as it does to launch satellites—"say four or five billion dollars"—the artificial heart could be perfected much sooner.