Ten years ago, just as Dr. Barney Clark was going into surgery to have his heart replaced by a machine, he looked up at his wife and wondered out loud how the change of heart would affect his emotions.
"I have loved you with my natural heart in place," Clark told his wife, Una Loy, "I wonder if I will love you in a different way without my natural heart."Following the surgery, Clark, unable to speak, silently mouthed the words, "I love you," to his wife.
Science - and hundreds whose lives have been extended by an artificial heart - have benefited immensely by the bravery of Clark and the team of surgeons that implanted a plastic pump into the chest of the Seattle dentist 10 years ago, Dr. Chase Peterson told an audience celebrating the anniversary Wednesday.
Lessons were learned as Clark lived for 112 days sustained by the pulsating of the Jarvik-7 heart, forging the path for artificial heart research today. But one of the most important lessons, perhaps, was that "love can survive the excision of the heart," Peterson said.
A decade ago, Clark, his wife and doctors were unprepared for the onslaught of attention by the world as every detail of the historical surgery was reported.
Why was the world so interested in the implanting of a total artificial heart?
The heart is more than a medical organ. It is endowed with poetic qualities, such as courage and love.
"Have you ever read a poem about the liver?" asked Peterson.
The former University of Utah president, who served as spokesman for the research team in 1982, recalled the media controversy surrounding Clark's implant.
"It was impossible to conduct the experience in private." While the medical community accused the university of "grandstanding," the public seemed to applaud an unprecedented openness in sharing the experiment in the media, said Peterson.
Because he was assisting a patient in Louisville, Ky., Dr. William DeVries who led the surgery team in the historical implant, could not attend the ceremony Wednesday. Peterson described DeVries as "gallant and brave" in his leadership.
Dr. Robert Jarvik, who invented the Jarvik-7 and now conducts research in New York, stressed the urgent need for a permanent, implantable heart to be developed that could provide five to 20 years of comfortable living.
Using the artificial as a bridge before transplanting a donor heart is "no answer to heart disease," he said.
Research on the artificial heart is not progressing as quickly as it should because "it is not a politically popular disease," Jarvik argued.
AIDS receives more attention because of activists pushing for funding, but more people die every year from heart disease, he said.
Pulling out a model of his newest design - the Jarvik 2000 - from underneath his suit jacket, Jarvik predicted that this device, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, will be the heart of the future.
The Jarvik 2000 can be placed into a diseased heart by slipping it into the ventricle. A rotary blood pump takes over the pumping activity. It is an intraventricular artificial heart, he explained.
"By reducing the complexity of the artificial heart, we will reach the goal of practicality," Jarvik said.
In addition to Clark, four other people were implanted with the Jarvik-7, but the heart was criticized as not advanced enough for implanting in humans. The Federal Drug Administration withdrew its approval for continued use in 1990.
The current director of the U.'s artificial heart program, Dr. Don Olsen, told the audience he is optimistic about the possibility of an electric-powered, totally implantable heart in the future.
This year, Olsen's research team implanted an electrohydraulic heart in a calf that lived 158.6 days. The calf, nicknamed "Deedee Cow-adini," died Nov. 16.
Olsen's team has received permission to supply a heart called the C-70 (patterned after the Jarvik-7) to six hospitals.
Dr. Lyle Joyce, a member of the surgery team in 1982, predicted that in 10 years, there will be people walking around with totally implantable hearts.
When the university was implanting the Jarvik-7 years ago, they faced harsh disapproval by the medical community. Clark's courage to undergo an experimental implant of an artificial heart changed the enthusiasm for heart implant research worldwide.
More than 1,000 patients have been treated with artificial hearts as a bridge to a transplant, he said.
Clark's widow, Una Loy Clark Farrer, 71, gave an emotional tribute to the doctors and staff who extended the life of her husband.
"I thank you from the bottom of my heart. There are no words that can express my love and devotion for all of you," she said. "All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and I wouldn't trade it for the world."
Since her husband's death, she has married her deceased sister's husband, Glen F. Farrer.
When she and Clark considered undergoing the experimental surgery, they had no idea it would generate such publicity. They received more than 1,000 letters from people across the world, thanking them for their contribution to heart research.
"Barney just wanted to make inroads in research for others," she said. "He wanted more than anything to make a slight contribution to science and the development of the artificial heart."
She urged doctors to continue the research. "Lead us to the dream we dreamed of 10 long years ago."