by Mimi Swartz
“The pump was still working”: Domingo Liotta, Amazing Adventures of a Heart Surgeon: The Artificial Heart: The Frontiers of Human Life (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007), 173.
DeBakey also used federal grants: William Akers, interview, along with various news clippings on the Rice/Baylor collaboration.
Rice engineers were then known: Michael E. DeBakey, “The Odyssey of the Artificial Heart,” Artificial Organs vol 24, no. 6 (2000): 405–11.
Then, in August 1966: Many accounts exist of the Esperanza del Valle Vasquez procedure. Sources here included Winters, Houston Hearts; DeBakey, “Odyssey of the Artificial Heart.”
CHAPTER 6: THE PURLOINED HEART
The account of the growing feud between Cooley and DeBakey and the implantation of the artificial heart in Haskell Karp comes from multiple sources, including Life magazine, “The Feud,” the New York Times, Cooley’s autobiography, Domingo Liotta’s autobiography, Tommy Thompson’s Hearts, and DeBakey, “Odyssey of the Artificial Heart.” I am also extremely grateful to the family of Haskell and Miriam Karp for allowing me to read Mrs. Karp’s diary of that difficult time. Interviews also include those with Cooley, Frazier, et cetera. I am also deeply indebted to Renee C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey, whose account of the implantation in chapter 6 of The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Dialysis (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2013) is truly outstanding.
“Congratulations on your first transplant”: Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 125.
“Maybe it’s immodest of me”: Cooley, Ibid., 125.
“Denton just got tired of sucking hind tit”: Thomas Thompson, “The Texas Tornado vs. Dr. Wonderful,” Life, April 10, 1970, 69.
Other surgeons around the world were reporting: Thomas Thompson, “The Year They Changed Hearts: A New and Disquieting Look at Transplants,” Life, September 17, 1971, 56–70.
Many in the press thought: Judith Randal, “Transplants, Apollo Both Misguided?” Washington Star, January 26, 1969.
“I can respect”: Denton Cooley, Essays of Denton A. Cooley, M.D.: Reflections and Observations (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1984).
Then, on a sweltering day in July: Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 89–90.
“Cooley and I moved forward”: Liotta, Amazing Adventures of a Heart Surgeon, 194.
“Domingo, we administered”: Ibid., 199.
CHAPTER 7: EXPERIMENTS
Interviewees for this chapter include Marianne Mallia, Bud Frazier, Steve Parnis, Betsy Parish, Ruth SoRelle, Ruth Sylvester, Michael Jhin, and others.
DeBakey had learned: Statement of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, made to the executive committee of the Baylor College of Medicine Board of Trustees, April 10, 1969.
“A successful cardiovascular surgeon”: Stephen Westaby, Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
By the early 1970s: Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 152–54; also interviews with those mentioned above.
One of those was a product: Karl Heusler and Alfred Pletsher, “The Controversial Early History of Cyclosporine,” Swiss Medical Weekly, June 2, 2001, 21–22, 299–302.
Small, intense, and bespectacled: For a good account of Vic Poirier’s many contributions, see ASAIO Pioneer Interviews, https://asaio.com/about-us/asaio-pioneer-interviews. See also Jonathan B. Welch, “Case Study: Heart, Soul and Cash at Thermo Cardiosystems, Inc.,” Journal of Financial Education 29 (Winter 2003): 90–112.
Eventually Frazier, working with Cooley and Norman: O. H. Frazier, “Mechanical Cardiac Assistance: Historical Perspectives,” Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 12, no. 3 (July 2000): 207–20. See also O. H. Frazier, “Mechanical Circulatory Assist Device Development at the Texas Heart Institute: A Personal Perspective,” Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 26, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 4–13.
CHAPTER 8: BARNEY WHO?
Many interviews and much research went into this chapter, including, of course, Bud Frazier and Robert Jarvik. Once again, outstanding work on this episode in American medical history was done by Fox and Swazey in Spare Parts. Also see Margery Shaw, ed., After Barney Clark: Reflections on the Utah Artificial Heart Program (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984). Great work was also done by the Canadian medical historian Shelley McKellar in “Limitations Exposed: Willem J. Kolff and His Contentious Pursuit of a Mechanical Heart,” in Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss: Figuring the Social, ed. E. A. Heaman, Alison Li, and Shelley McKellar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Also see Barron H. Lerner, When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 180–200.
“The Artificial Heart Is Here”: James Salter and Marie Claude Wren, “The Artificial Heart Is Here,” Life, September 1981, 28–36.
As far as the general public knew: Several accounts of DeBakey’s revenge exist, including Cooley’s in 100,000 Hearts, 144–48. I also completed an interview with Al Rienert, whose lively account of the trial appeared in the Houston Chronicle in June 1972. There also exists a video dramatization of the legal proceedings entitled “The Trial of Denton Cooley,” NOVA, PBS Television, 1978.
“should have stimulated further clinical trials”: Cooley, Essays of Denton A. Cooley, 104.
When he ran into Akutsu: Salter and Wren, “Artificial Heart Is Here,” 31–36.
For the last few months: My account of the Barney Clark surgery comes largely from the sources cited above, as well as Salter and Wren, “Artificial Heart Is Here.”
“the body as an entity of replaceable parts”: Alison Li, et al. (eds.), Limitations Exposed: Willem S. Kolff and His Contentious Pursuit of a Mechanical Heart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 400.
He cast his net so widely: Nicholas Genes, “Paul Winchell and the Artificial Heart,” MedGadget, July 1, 2005, https://www.medgadget.com/2005/07/paul_winchell_a.html. To view his US patent no. 3097366, see https://www.google.com/patents/US3097366.
At Kolff’s direction: Janny Scott, “Lack of Recognition Embitters Some Pioneers of Artificial Heart Design,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1987.
In a classic example: Robert Jarvik, “The Total Artificial Heart,” Scientific American, January 1981, 74.
It must have galled the Utah surgeons: Cooley, Essays of Denton A. Cooley, 139.
As a headline in People put it: Frank W. Martin, “Utah Surgeon William DeVries Seeks a Patient Who Could Live with a Man-Made Heart,” People, July 19, 1982, 30–31.
Clark was, in short, a brave: The fascinating psychological report that is threaded through this chapter is cited as follows: Claudia K. Berenson and Bernard I. Grosser, “Total Artificial Heart Implantation,” Archives of General Psychiatry 41 (September 1984): 910–16.
Their authority would be questioned: President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Congressional Record, October 14, 1978; “The President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research: A Guide to the Records in the Bioethics Research Library,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/archives/Presidents-Commission-for-Study-of-Ethical-Problems-in-Medicine-and-in-Biomedical-and-Behavioral-Research-Original-Archive-Finding-Aid.pdf.
Not coincidentally: As stated above, much of this account draws on the work of Fox and Swazey, Spare Parts.
That eleven-page consent form: Shaw, ed., After Barney Clark, Appendix A.
But it was Barton J. Bernstein: Barton J. Bernstein, “The Misguided Quest for the Artificial Heart,” Technology Review, November/December 1984, 19.
CHAPTER 9: THE PRISONER
Interviewees for this chapter included Bud Frazier, Claudia Feldman, and Shana Templeton and her mothe
r, Tara.
A government study released in May 1982: Deborah P. Lubeck and John P. Bunker, The Implications of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Medical Technology, Background Paper #2: Case Studies of Medical Technologies, Case Study #9: The Artificial Heart: Cost, Risks, and Benefits (Washington, DC: GPO, 1982).
Over time, with more experiments: Thermo Cardiosystems Inc., “HeartMate Left Ventricular-Assist System,” October 1995.
Mike Templeton was a very young: The accounts of Mike Templeton’s life come from multiple interviews but also the following print accounts of the time: Judith Anne Yeaple, “The Bionic Heart,” Popular Science, April 1992, 64–69; D. J. Wilson, “Portable Heart Assist Pump Working Fine; Gives Patient Here a Month of New Life,” Houston Chronicle, October 2, 1991, A-6; Claudia Feldman, “Mike Templeton’s Broken Heart: A New Device Keeps His Heart Beating Just Fine, but Now He Wants to Go Home,” Houston Chronicle, April 12, 1992, A-6; Claudia Feldman, “Then & Now/1991: Mike Templeton,” Houston Chronicle, July 10, 1994, 15; Michael J. Neill, “Cardiac Arrest,” People, September 14, 1992; “Man with Experimental Heart Device Dies,” New York Times, January 21, 1993.
CHAPTER 10: THE WILDERNESS
Interviews: Bud Frazier, Richard Wampler, Steve Parnis, Bob Benkowski, and Marianne Mallia.
Since the late 1980s: Among others, “Special Report: The Political History of the Artificial Heart,” New England Journal of Medicine, February 2, 1984; Ralph Brauer, “The Promise That Failed,” New York Times Magazine, August 28, 1988; Thomas Preston, “The Artificial Heart,” in Diana B. Dutton with contributions by Thomas A. Preston and Nancy E. Pfund, Worse Than the Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Gideon Gil, “The Artificial Heart Juggernaut,” Hastings Center Report, March 1, 1989; Charles Siebert, “The Rehumanization of the Heart: What Doctors Have Forgotten, Poets Have Always Known,” Harper’s, February 1990, 53; Howard Witt, “Soul-Searching over Artificial Hearts Intensifies,” Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1986.
So too did the so-called Baby Fae case: Lawrence K. Altman, “Baby Fae, Who Received a Heart from Baboon, Dies After 20 Days,” New York Times, November 16, 1984.
Much closer to home: Steve McVicker, “Bursting the Bubble,” Houston Press, April 10, 1997.
Then there was the issue of cost: Barton J. Bernstein, “The Artificial Heart: Is It a Boon or a High-Tech Fix?,” The Nation, June 22, 1983, 71–72.
“I was like Robinson Crusoe”: Dan Baum, “No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented the Human Heart,” Popular Science, March 2012, 4.
But after being widowed: “For Dr. DeBakey and His Bride, It Was All Hearts and Flowers,” People magazine, August 25, 1975.
Moreover, it became clear that: Along with interviews, I drew on several accounts of the artificial heart crisis of this period: Brauer, “Promise That Failed”; Philip M. Boffey, “Washington Talk: National Institutes of Health; Battling Congress over Priorities on Heart,” New York Times, July 8, 1988; Joseph Paul Martino, Science Funding: Politics and Porkbarrel (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992), 94–95; “The Dracula of Medical Technology,” editorial, New York Times, May 16, 1988; “Senators Doctors Kennedy and Hatch,” editorial, New York Times, July 15, 1988; Robert Jarvik, “Revive Artificial Heart with Money and Vision,” letter to the editor, New York Times, August 8, 1988; “Claude Lenfant to Retire from National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute,” press release, NHLBI, June 3, 2003.
Something else happened: A good general description of the Challenger explosion can be found in Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision, Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Also Allan J. McDonald, Truth, Lies and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012); Daniel Riffe and James Glen Stovall, “Diffusion of News of Space Shuttle Disaster: What Role for Emotional Response?,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 66, no. 3 (September 1989): 551–56; John C. Wright, Dale Kunkel, Marites Pinon, and Aletha C. Houston, “How Children Reacted to Televised Coverage of the Space Shuttle Disaster,” Journal of Communication 39, no. 2 (June 1, 1989): 27.
Like Denton Cooley: Author interviews, Richard Wampler, Bud Frazier, Marianne Mallia; Lawrence K. Altman, “A Tiny Heart Pump Saves Its First Life, Researchers Report,” New York Times, May 5, 1988; Baum, “No Pulse”; O. E. Frazier, “Mechanical Circulatory Assist Device Development at the Texas Heart Institute: A Personal Perspective,” Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 147, no. 6 (June 2014): 1738–44; Steven Phillips, “Project Bionics Pioneer Interview: ASAIO Interviews of Richard Wampler and O. H. Frazier,” June 9, 2011, https://asaio.com/about-us/asaio-pioneer-interviews; Richard Wampler, “Tiny, Experimental Pump Offers Hope for Heart Patients,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1988; Richard Wampler, letter to the Awards Committee, Clair Pomeroy Awards, April 4, 2011.
CHAPTER 11: SYNCHRONICITY
Interviewees included Richard Wampler, Robert Jarvik, Marianne Mallia, Bud Frazier, Steve Parnis, and more on background.
Bud likes to cite: Michael Walsh, “Change of Hearts: Medical Thriller Provokes Thought,” Reeling Back, December 3, 2013, http://reelingback.com/articles/change_of_hearts. Threshold was written by James Salter, who covered the artificial heart race between Houston and Utah for Life magazine in September 1981; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083197.
The board of the company: Fox and Swazey, Spare Parts, 139–40.
Having shifted his base of operations: Ibid., 140–47.
Life magazine’s May 1985 story on Schroeder: Jeff Wheelwright, “Bill’s Heart: The Troubling Story Behind a Historic Experiment,” Life, May 1985, 33–42.
But, as many celebrities would soon learn: Laurence Gonzales, “The Rock ’n’ Roll Heart of Robert Jarvik,” Playboy, April 1986, 84.
By August 1987, Jarvik had divorced: Julie Baumgold, “In the Kingdom of the Brain,” New York Magazine, February 6, 1989, 36.
Jarvik was so upset: Interviews, Bud Frazier, Robert Jarvik, and Marianne Mallia.
“I don’t know what stage”: “Electric Heart,” NOVA, PBS, aired December 21, 1999, transcript at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2617eheart.html.
If that wasn’t bad enough: Baum, “No Pulse.” Also Mikhail Iliev, “Absolute Capital Management Leaves Investors Mired in Lawsuits,” FINalternatives, April 26, 2011, http://www.finalternatives.com/node/15700.
“If you compare it to a prize fight”: “Electric Heart,” NOVA.
CHAPTER 12: THE KING OF DISTRACTION
Interviewees included Billy Cohn, Bud Frazier, Marianne Mallia, Jesse Rios, Mishaun Cohn, Judith Cohn, John Cohn, Bruce Rosengard, Michael Jhin, Betsy Parish, and Ruth SoRelle.
“I quickly saw”: William Michael Smith, “Rock ’n’ Roll Heart,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Winter 2012, http://www2.oberlin.edu/alummag/winter2013/rocknroll.html.
The first invention he brought: Jerome Groopman, “Heart Surgery Unplugged: Making the Coronary Bypass Safer, Cheaper, and Easier,” New Yorker, January 11, 1999, 43.
“Like cutting a gemstone”: Ibid., 43.
He was the old family friend: Todd Ackerman, “Cooley Defends Advice About Cheney,” Houston Chronicle, October 21, 2013.
But this was not to be: Associated Press, “Heart Patient from ‘Miracle Workers’ Dies,” Today, March 20, 2006.
CHAPTER 13: HEARTMATES
Interviewees include Bud Frazier, Rich Wampler, Billy Cohn, Bob Benkowski, Ken Hoge, Linda Lewis, Denton Cooley, George Noon, Steve Parnis, Frank Michel, and others on background.
As he moved into his eighties: Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 193–98.
A year or so later, DeBakey nearly died: Lawrence K. Altman, “The Man on the Table Devised the Surgery,” New York Times, December 25, 2006.
“Especi
ally, I am grateful”: Cooley, 100,000 Hearts, 195.
And sure enough: Todd Ackerman, “Legendary Heart Surgeons DeBakey, Cooley Mend Rift,” Houston Chronicle, November 6, 2007.
Thousands came to a viewing: Todd Ackerman and Eric Berger, “DeBakey’s Death Is a Heartfelt Loss for Houston, World of Medicine,” Houston Chronicle, July 12, 2008.
So on a sunny spring day: Eric Berger, “Artificial Heart ‘A Leap Forward,’ Houston Docs Say,” Houston Chronicle, March 23, 2011.
CHAPTER 14: THE AUSTRALIAN GUY
Interviewees include Bud Frazier, Billy Cohn, Daniel Timms, Steve Parnis, and Mariane Mallia. Also, in preparation for a film tribute to Dr. Frazier, a marketing agency called Ttweak conducted extensive interviews with Frazier, Cohn, Timms, and others, from which these scenes are also drawn.
Still, the attendant publicity: TEDMED talk with Bud Frazier and Billy Cohn, 2012; Berger, “Artificial Heart ‘A Leap Forward.’ ”
To explain how it would work: For those who want more information on the Bivacor and its workings, the website is helpful: www.bivacor.com. Of course, the device has gone through myriad iterations since the scene described here.
When Daniel wasn’t refining: Most of the biographical information here comes from interviews with Daniel Timms, but I also drew on a few stories from the Australian press, including Trent Dalton, “Bivacor Heart: Daniel Timms’ Stroke of Genius,” The Australian, February 23, 2016.
he took his device: Dalton, “Daniel Timms’ Stroke of Genius.”