Christiaan Barnard

Patients without borders: Cardiac surgery, activism, and advocacy

July 29, 2022

Annabelle Slingerland Leiden, Netherlands “Inspired by the media on the Dutch Heart Patient Organization” by Yasmine Hilhorst. In the 1970s, a “patients without borders” organization made it possible for people with severe heart disease to be flown to other countries for treatment that was unavailable in their home country. It was a decade after […]

Christiaan Barnard and the first heart transplant

January 27, 2017

Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Christiaan Barnard (1922—2001) In 1968 while I was a cardiology fellow at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, there was a buzz of excitement—Christiaan Barnard was coming to talk about his heart transplants! Our chief cardiovascular surgeon at the time was C. Walton Lillehei, no slouch of […]

January 22, 2017

Shameemah Abrahams South Africa Dr. Christiaan Barnard The year 1945 is iconic as the end of one of the most pivotal and devastating periods in human history—World War II. That same year, as the world began to rebuild, in the coastal city of Cape Town at the tip of Africa, a young medical graduate […]