ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine the course of human cardiac transplantation between December 1967 and the fall of 1970. During the first three years of cardiac transplantation, controversy over whether the procedure was developed enough to use on patients was repeatedly accompanied by the question whether a moratorium on heart transplants had already occurred. Heart transplantation in the first three years after Christiaan Barnard performed the "miracle at Cape Town" can be divided into four periods. 1968 was heralded by the mass media as the "Year of the Transplant," when 105 were performed. In January 1969 the Montreal Heart Institute decided to suspend cardiac transplantation. By spring/summer 1969 the first enthusiasm over the promise of cardiac implantation had cooled, and those in the field were admitting to a "guarded outlook" about its present uses and future course. Throughout 1970 the slowdown continued. Several transplanters publicly predicted that there would be a heart transplant renaissance in Year Four.
