He was a native South African who had the chance to be partly trained in the US and who visited Prof. Norman Shumway and Prof. Richard Lauer in Minneapolis and Stanford, where they pioneered experimental cardiac transplantation.

Back in Cape Town, Dr Barnard performed the first human heart transplant successfully on 3 December 1967. Dr Barnard became quite famous after this and was invited worldwide for scientific and humanitarian events. As such he had connections with Gstaad celebrities such as Peter Sellers, Sir Roger Moore and Princess Grace of Monaco and may well have visited Gstaad during the 70s and 80s.

I had the pleasure of meeting
Dr. Barnard during my career and was invited to the recent conference to give a key note on my involvement in Stanford as well as the first successful cardiac xenotransplant, ie a transplant between species. In 1984 I was on the team of the first cardiac xenotransplant from a young baboon to a new-born baby known as Baby Fae. The transplantation was successful and the baby did very well during the first ten days but unfortunately died on day twenty due to intractable rejection. Baby Fae was also the first successful cardiac paediatric transplant, opening the field of human cardiac transplantation on children, who now show very promising long-term survival results.

In Switzerland the shortage of organs is still the main limiting factor for transplantation. Currently, there are some discussions to try to introduce presumed consent, which means that everyone is considered a donor unless they actively opt out. This measure would massively improve the chances of patients on the waiting list to receive an organ.

Beat Walpoth