Medical Research and the First Heart Transplant in the South

The first human organ transplant, a kidney, took place in 1954. By the 1960s, the human heart transplant was on the medical horizon. On December 3, 1967, a large team led by cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who had trained in Richmond, VA under Drs. David Hume and Richard Lower, performed the world’s first human-to-human (allogeneic) heart transplant in Capetown, South Africa. On May 25, 1968, an MCV team led by cardiac surgeon Dr. Richard Lower performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in the South. This was the sixteenth heart transplant in the world. The heart of African American laborer Bruce Tucker, who had suffered a severe head injury, deemed by physicians of the time to be an unrecoverable injury, was transplanted into Joseph Klett, a white businessman. As recent studies reveal, neither Bruce Tucker nor his family consented to the transplant.