Dr. James D. Hardy, Transplant Pioneer, Dies at 84

Dr. James D. Hardy, 84, whose medical team at the University of Mississippi Medical Center performed the world's first heart transplant in 1964,has died at a retirement home.

Hardy's team transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee into a dying diabetes patient three years before Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant. The patient lived for 90 minutes with the chimpanzee heart following the surgery.

In University of Mississippi documents, Hardy later wrote that the heart transplant ``precipitated intense ethical, moral, social, religious, financial, governmental and even legal concerns. We had not transplanted merely a human heart, we had transplanted a subhuman heart."

Hardy led the Society of University Surgeons, the Society of Surgical Chairmen, the Southern Surgical Association, the American College of Surgeons and a number of other medical organizations during his career.

Other Sources: University of Mississippit