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When In 1967, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967, it and was initially seen as a remarkable scientific achievement, but overtime both the . But over time this achievement was perceived to be a failure. The medical community and the general public were forced to re-evaluate heart transplants. The medical community quickly realized that the first transplants were little more than dangerous and unpredictable experiments. These operations were almost uniformly unsuccessful. They failed because the surgical procedure was extremely complex, and the patients were prone to develop life -threatening infections and organ rejection was incredibly common. Ultimately, heart transplants raised deep medical, ethical and even religious concerns that the medical community was forced to address.
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Admin moved page Why was the First Heart Transplant a Failure? to Why was the First Heart Transplant a Failure
[[File:Christiaan_Barnard_(1968).jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Christiaan Barnard]]
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Barnad's operation was initially successful. Washkansky not only survived the surgery, but when he awoke from the surgery he stated, "I am the new Frankenstein." His statement was richly ironic because Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was banned in South Africa for immorality. <ref>Lederer, <i>Religious Bodies</i>, p. 201.</ref> He even had the opportunity to spend time with his wife during the next 17 days. Unfortunately, at that point he contracted pneumonia and died. While Groote Schuur had an excellent cardiac unit, it did not have sufficient expertise in immune suppression. To avoid organ rejection, Washkansky was administered immune suppression drugs, but they ended weakening his immune system too much and made him susceptible to infection. Board members of the United States Institute of Medicine argued that Barnard "lacked a proper team of immunologists" to assist in the transplant and that oversight doomed his patient.<ref>Berkowitz, Edward, <i>To Improve Human Health: A History of the Institute of Medicine</i>, https://www.nap.edu/read/6382, (National Academy Press, 1998), 16.</ref>
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Despite Washansky's death, Barnard's operation was a boon for both his reputation and South Africa. Barnard and Washkansky briefly became "pop stars with worldwide media coverage."<ref>Hamilton, <i>A History of Organ Transplantation</i>, 348.</ref> South Africa was becoming increasingly toxic on the world stage because of its oppressive enforcement of apartheid. The South African government saw it as an opportunity to extoll the virtues of their regime.
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