Background

Christiaan N. Barnard was born on November 8, 1922, in Beaufort West, South Africa, to Adam Barnard and Maria Elisabeth de Swart.

Education

In 1940, Barnard entered the Beaufort West High School. Later, he went to study medicine at the University of Cape Town Medical School, where he graduated in 1946.

In 1955, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He received his Ph. D. from Minnesota and returned to his native country to embark upon a career as a cardiothoracic surgeon.

Career

After an internship at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, Christiaan worked as a general practitioner in the rural town of Ceres. A few years later in 1951, Barnard took a junior medical post at City Hospital, then won a scholarship for postgraduate training in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota in the United States (US). There, he learnt to surgically correct congenital heart defects.

In 1958, armed with a heart-lung machine provided by the US government, Barnard returned to Cape Town to establish Groote Schuur Hospital’s first heart unit and soon headed its Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. He introduced open-heart surgery to that country, designed artificial valves for the human heart, and experimented with the transplantation of the hearts of dogs. All of this served as preparation for his 1967 human heart transplant.

Although Barnard was a pioneering cardiac surgeon, his innovations were founded upon a half-century of experimental heart surgery that preceded them. Of crucial importance was the first use of hypothermia (artificial lowering of the body temperature) in 1952 and the introduction in the following year of an effective heart-lung machine. These advances, combined with other techniques perfected in 1960, enabled a surgeon for the first time to operate upon a heart that was motionless and free of blood. After a decade of heart surgery, Barnard felt ready to accept the challenge posed by the transplantation of the human heart. In 1967 he encountered Louis Washkansky, a 54-year-old patient who suffered from extensive coronary artery disease and who agreed to undergo a heart transplant operation.

On December 2, 1967, the heart of a young woman killed in an accident was removed while Washkansky was prepared to receive it. The donor's heart was kept alive in a heart-lung machine circulating Washkansky's blood until the patient's diseased organ could be removed and replaced with the healthy one. In order to suppress the body's defense mechanism that would normally reject a foreign organism, Barnard and his team of cardiac specialists gave the patient large doses of drugs, which allowed the patient's body to accept the new organ. However, Washkansky's body was not able to defend itself against infection, and he died on December 21, 1967, of double pneumonia. Despite Washkansky's death, Barnard was rightly hailed around the world for his surgical feat.

Barnard's second heart transplant operation was performed on 2 January 1968 almost a month after the first, this time on Dr. Philip Blaaiberg, whose dauntless spirit made him a national hero in his own right. Blaaiberg lived for twenty months. Surgeons worldwide followed Barnard's lead, and by October 1971 recorded heart transplants numbered 178. Twenty-seven patients had survived, but only five of these had lived longer than three years. Forty-year-old Mrs. Dorothy Fischer was given a new heart in 1969 and became the longest surviving patient.

Seven years after his initial heart transplant, Barnard made medical history once again when he performed a "twin-heart" operation (November 25, 1974). This time he removed only the diseased portion of the heart of 58-year-old Ivan Taylor and replaced it with the heart of a 10-year-old child. The donor heart acted as a booster and back-up for the patient's disease-ravished organ. Although Barnard was optimistic about this new operation, which he believed was less radical than a total implantation, the patient died within four months.

Shortly after performing his first two historic operations Barnard made it known that he was suffering from arthritis; his hands were becoming crippled at the joints. Barnard served as the head of the cardiac unit at Groote Schuur Hospital until 1983, at which time he retired from active surgical practice.

Barnard subsequently pursued other ventures and helped to establish a new transplant institute during his two years at the Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City in Oklahoma, United States. His prodigious writing attracted a limited readership, including another autobiography called The Second Life, as well as various novels and health books such as Christiaan Barnard’s Program for Living with Arthritis.

He also served as a research adviser to the Clinique la Prairie in Switzerland and claimed that the cosmetic Glycel had the ability to cause rejuvenation of cells. The controversial product was later denied approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, and this dubious venture, along with appearances in television commercials and sponsorship of commercial products, tarnished his reputation as a serious scientist and surgeon.

Achievements

• Christiaan N. Barnard is widely known as the first person who performed the world's first human heart transplant operation in 1967 and the first double-heart transplant in 1974. After Barnard's successful operations, surgeons in Europe and the United States began performing heart transplants, improving upon the procedures first used in South Africa. Barnard had also gained recognition for research in gastrointestinal pathology.
  
  Barnard's innovations in cardiac surgery brought him honors from a host of foreign medical societies, governments, universities, and philanthropic institutions. He has been presented many honorary doctorates, foreign orders, and awards, including the Dag Hammarskjold International Prize and Peace Prize, the Kennedy Foundation Award, and the Milan International Prize for Science. Barnard was also featured in a BBC program about transplant surgery, "Knife to the Heart: The Man With the Golden Hands," in early 1997.
  
  Christiaan was proposed for the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine but did not win the award. In the Outpatients Waiting Hall at Kings College Hospital, London, a mural designed by wallscapes artist Gary Drostle was erected in 1996 and fills the arch in the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The mural depicts the story of the history of medical science from the days of the trepanation of prehistoric skulls to modern times. On the mural stands a portrait of Christiaan Barnard as representative of those who strive for the advance of medicine.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Your Healthy Heart: The Family Guide to Staying Healthy & Living Longer

    (The pioneer heart surgeon provides step-by-step guidance ...)

    1988
  • Body Machine

    (A team of medical experts reports on current knowledge ab...)

    1983
  • Good Life Good Death: A Doctor's Case for Euthanasia and Suicide

    (A strong advocate of euthanasia, the world-renowned heart...)

    1980
  • 50 Ways to a Healthy Heart

    (Full of lively gems, this practical book provides all the...)

    2001
  • Heart Attack: You Don't Have to Die

    (In this book Dr. Barnard, in understandable and sympathet...)

    1971
  • The Donor 1996
  • In the Night Season 1978
  • The Best Medicine 1979

Views

Barnard did much to promote insight into the problems of death and dying. The question of whether to allow a patient to die naturally or to prolong an ebbing life artificially is fraught with clinical and emotional complexities. Although the medical association is officially against euthanasia, Barnard won international respect for his plea to request governments to legitimize it. He always contended that the quality of life should influence the ultimate decision.

Quotations: "I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today, and that is stop the suffering of the patient."

"On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned."

"The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped."

"Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is."

"I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it."

"The individual is the brain, not the heart."

"It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms."

"For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion."

"I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures."

"If the poor overweight jogger only knew how far he had to run to work off the calories in a crust of bread he might find it better in terms of pound per mile to go to a massage parlor."

"I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures."

Personality

Barnard became an overnight international celebrity. Barnard’s picture graced the covers of magazines such as Time, and he accepted invitations worldwide to meet dignitaries and heads of states. In public, he was mobbed for autographs, and the press loved him for his good looks and his witty, articulate manner of speaking.

Derided for his "rather impetuous, flamboyant and undignified global lap of honor", Barnard himself admitted that his open indulgence in women and socialising did not match the image of a distinguished professor. He gained notoriety for his love affairs, notably with the famous Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida.

Barnard especially loved his pediatric patients and established the Christiaan Barnard Foundation to benefit underprivileged children worldwide.

Physical Characteristics: In addition to his disabling arthritis, Barnard also suffered from asthma, once remarking that he greatly feared dying from an asthmatic attack. He carried an inhaler with him at all times. In 2001, when travelling in the coastal city of Paphos, Cyprus, he suffered an acute asthmatic attack that killed him at the age of 78.

Connections

Barnard was married three times. His first marriage was in 1948 to Aletta Gertruida Louw, a nurse, whom he married while practicing medicine in Ceres. The couple had two children, Deirdre and Andre. In 1969, Barnard and his wife divorced.

In 1970, Barnard married heiress Barbara Zoellner when she was 19, the same age as his son, but in 1982 they divorced. The couple had two children, Christiaan Jr. and Frederick.

Barnard married for a third time in 1988 to Karin Setzkorn, a young model. They also had two children, Armin and Lara, but this last marriage also ended in divorce in 2000.

Father:

Adam Barnard

Adam Barnard was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Mother:

Maria Elisabeth de Swart

child:

Deirdre Barnard

Born in 1950

Deirdre Barnard is a champion water skier.

child:

Lara Barnard

Born in 1997

child:

Armin Barnard

Born in 1990

child:

Christiaan Barnard Jr.

Born in 1974

child:

Andre Barnard

1951–1984

child:

Frederick Barnard

Born in 1972

ex-wife:

Barbara Zoellner

ex-wife:

Karin Setzkorn

ex-wife:

Aletta Gertruida Louw

Brother:

Marius Barnard

3 November 1927 – 14 November 2014

Marius Stephanus Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon and inventor of critical illness insurance.

References

• Christiaan Barnard's Program for Living with Arthritis
  1984
• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010