Robert Jarvik, who co-designed the first permanent artificial heart, dies at 79
Jarvik received his medical degree at the University of Utah, and the implant of the first permanent artificial heart took place at the school as well. The surgery became the subject of both public fascination and fierce debate over medical ethics.
According to The New York Times, Jarvik's wife, Marilyn vos Savant, said his cause of death was complications from Parkinson's disease.
Jarvik was born in Midland, Michigan on May 11, 1946, and grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. His father, Norman, was a physician who ran a family practice and his mother Edythe ran scheduling at the practice, according to The New York Times.
Growing up, he was a 'tinkerer' who planned to study architecture but turned his interest to medicine after his father survived an aortic aneurysm, the Times obitury said. Norman Jarvik later died of a second aortic aneurysm.
Jarvik attended Syracuse University before studying medicine for two years at Italy's University of Bologna. Jarvik received a master's degree in occupational biomechanics from New York University and then moved to the University of Utah in 1971 where he completed a medical degree in 1976.
Jarvik did not follow the traditional medical career path of internship and residency, because he was more interested in developing an artificial heart, per The New York Times.
He married Vos Savant in 1985, who survives him.
Jarvik had two children, Kate Jarvik Birch and Tyler Jarvik, from his marriage to playwright and former Deseret News journalist Elaine Levin Jarvik, to whom he was married from 1968 to 1985. Vos Savant also has two children from a previous relationship, Mary Blinder and Dennis Younglove. Jarvik had five grandchildren.
Jarvik was on a team that worked with Dr. Willem Kolff, the director of the university's Division of Artificial Organs, to design a series of mechanical hearts. One of them, in 1982, was implanted in a cow named Alfred Lord Tennyson, who survived for 268 days, setting a record for an animal.
It was in 1982 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave permission to the University of Utah to implant a permanent artificial heart in a human. On Dec. 2, 1982, Dr. William C. DeVries led the surgical team that implanted the Jarvik-7 model in Barney Clark, a 61-year-old retired dentist. To encourage excellent work, Kolff put a student's name on a version of the heart to which they'd made a significant alteration, which is how the heart became the Jarvik-7, as Deseret News reported.
The surgery to implant the Jarvik-7, made of aluminum and plastic, lasted seven hours and afterwards Clark told his wife, 'I want to tell you even though I have no heart, I still love you,' per the University of Utah.
Clark survived 112 days attached to a 400-pound air compressor — roughly the size of a dishwasher — which helped the Jarvik-7 pump blood through his body. He never left the hospital and the complications included seizures, kidney failure and a broken valve on the artificial heart.
Clark died on March 23, 1983, of complications of a bacterial infection of the colon.
The second and third patient lived 620 days and 488 days, respectively, after receiving the experimental heart.
According to The New York Times, their survival showed that people 'could live long term on the plastic and metal device,' but that the complications the recipients suffered 'impaired the quality of their lives and blunted initial enthusiasm for the heart.'
Reporters from all over flocked to University of Utah hospital to cover the artificial heart. The news was celebrated by some, criticized by others. 'By the mid-1980s, medical ethicists and theologians were debating whether artificial hearts improved life or extended a painful decline toward death,' per The New York Times.
The Jarvik-7 was implanted in five patients as a permanent artificial heart and used hundreds of times as a temporary implant as patients waited for a donor heart. The FDA withdrew approval in 1990.
In 2018, Jarvik was honored by United Business Media for Lifetime Achievement, according to The University of Utah.
After leading Symbion, Inc., which was based in Salt Lake City, Jarvik founded Jarvik Heart, Inc. in 1987, based in New York. The company developed smaller, less obtrusive ventricular assist devices that helped pump blood from the heart's lower chambers to the rest of the body.
The Jarvik 2000 is around the size of a C battery and its pediatric version, the Jarvik 2015, is about the size of a AA battery, per The New York Times.
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Forbes
42 minutes ago
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Yahoo
13 hours ago
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70 years ago, a meteorite landed on an Alabama woman as she took a nap. Here's the strange story of Ann Hodges.
In 1954, Ann Hodges, was struck by a meteorite while taking a nap in her Alabama home. Overnight, Hodges became a celebrity as word of her strange story traveled across the country. It's the best-known case of a person being struck by a meteorite, although a man in Georgia just had a close call. Ann Hodges never intended to be famous, but in 1954 she found herself thrust into the national spotlight when her afternoon nap was interrupted by a falling meteorite. The Alabama woman has the distinction of being the first documented case of a person being struck by a meteorite. She survived with a bruised hip. In June, a man nearly joined her exclusive club when small space rocks pierced his roof in McDonough, Georgia, missing him by 14 feet, The New York Times reported. The fragments — from a meteorite that researchers say likely formed 4.56 billion years ago — dented his floor instead. In the more than 70 years since Hodges was struck, her strange tale remains a source of fascination. Mary Beth Prondzinski with the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where the meteorite is on exhibit, told Business Insider, "It's one of those local legends that not too many people know about." Here's what happened to Hodges and the meteorite. The Sylacauga meteorite, which is also called the Hodges meteorite, probably broke off the asteroid 1685 Toro. 1685 Toro, a mid-sized asteroid, has been classified by NASA JPL as a "Near Earth Asteroid" because of its orbit's proximity to Earth. Its size is similar to the island of Manhattan. An asteroid is a rocky object in space that orbits the sun. When an asteroid or a piece of one enters the Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor. What remains after impact is a meteorite. On the afternoon of November 30, 1954, locals in Sylacauga, Alabama, reported a bright streak in the sky. At a time when both the threat of an atomic bomb and little green men in flying saucers invaded public fear, it was perhaps unsurprising that residents in the small Alabama town started calling 911. The Decatur Daily reported that many people thought they were witnessing a plane crash. Ann Hodges, with her husband, rented a house in the Oak Grove community. Incredibly, across the street was the Comet Drive-In Theater, which had a neon sign depicting a comet falling through the sky, the Decatur Daily reported. A part of the meteor crashed through the roof of Ann Hodges' home. Hodges, who was 34 at the time, had been home with her mother on the afternoon of November 30. The meteorite crashed through the roof of Hodges' home at 2:46 p.m., Slate Magazine reported. "Ann Hodges was taking a nap on her living room couch and she was under a blanket, which probably saved her life somewhat," Prondzinski said. "The meteorite came down through the roof in the living room and it ricocheted off a stand-up console radio that was in the room and landed on her hip." Her mother, who was in another room, ran to her daughter's assistance when she heard her scream. In the aftermath, neither Hodges nor her mother knew what had happened. "All she knew is that something had hit her," Prondzinski said. "They found the meteorite, this big rock, and they couldn't figure out how it had got there." It weighed around 8.5 pounds. Prondzinski said the meteorite is a chondrite or stony meteorite and composed of iron and nickel. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the meteorite is an estimated 4.5 billion years old. When the meteor entered the Earth's atmosphere, it broke apart. One fragment hit Hodges while another was located a few miles away. A farmer, Julius Kempis McKinney, discovered the second fragment while driving a mule-drawn wagon and later sold it for enough money to buy both a house and car, the Decatur Daily reported. Neighbors and law enforcement rushed to Ann Hodges' home. "Before you knew it, everyone in town was surrounding the house wanting to see what had happened," Prondzinski said. "In those days they didn't have Facebook, but word still traveled quickly," she added. A doctor and the police were called to the home. Prondzinski said it was Mayor Ed Howard and the police chief who discovered the hole in the ceiling where the meteorite had crashed through. The Decatur Daily reported the impact of the meteorite left a large "grapefruit"-sized bruise on Hodges' hip. "She had this incredible bruise on her hip," Prondzinski told Business Insider. "She was taken to the hospital, not because she was so severely injured that she needed to be hospitalized, but because she was very distraught by the whole incident. She was a very nervous person, and she didn't like all the notoriety or all the people around." Hodges' husband, Eugene, arrived home from work to find his house surrounded by a crowd of people. Hodges' radio may have saved her from being seriously injured. "The fact that it came through the roof, that slowed its trajectory, and the fact that it did bounce off the radio — if she had been lying under the radio, it would have broken her leg or her back. It probably wouldn't have killed her, but it would have done a lot more damage to her," Prondzinski said. The Air Force confiscated the meteorite so they could determine its origin. "The Air Force looked at it because they thought it was a flying saucer and all this other wild and crazy stuff," Prondzinski said. After it was confirmed a meteorite, the Hodgeses faced a lengthy litigation process to acquire ownership of it. Their landlord, Birdie Guy, believe the meteorite belonged to her because she owned the house. "Suing is the only way she'll ever get it," Hodges told reporters at the time. "I think God intended it for me. After all, it hit me!" The Decatur Daily News reported Guy wanted money to fix the house's roof. Litigation went on for a year, and Prondzinski said Guy settled the case for $500. The house eventually caught fire and was demolished to make way for a mobile home park. Hodges became an overnight celebrity and was even featured on a game show. "She became famous for 15 minutes. She had all these photo shoots. She was invited to go to New York City to be on Garry Moore's show '["I've Got a Secret"] where the panel had to guess what's her profession or what happened to her, why she is a notable figure," Prondzinski said. Hodges would receive fan mail from churches, children, and educators asking about the meteorite, but she never answered any of them, leaving it to her lawyer. "She was a very quiet person. She was a very private person," Prondzinski said. "She did not like having all the notoriety." Hodges decided to donate the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History. "By the time she had got the meteorite in her possession, she was so sick of the whole thing. She said, 'You can have it,'" Prondzinski said. All Hodges asked in return was for the museum to reimburse her for her attorney fees. Prondzinski said the meteorite created problems between Hodges and her husband, Eugene. Her husband wanted to make money off the meteorite but failed to secure a buyer. The two eventually divorced in 1964. In 1972, aged 52, Hodges died of kidney failure in a nursing home. Hodges is the first documented person to have been hit by a meteorite. Recently, a man in Georgia narrowly missed being hit by another. "She's the only one who's ever been hit by a meteorite and lived to tell about it. Because of that, the meteorite has been appraised at over a million dollars," Prondzinski said. In an interview with National Geographic, Florida State College astronomer Michael Reynolds said, "You have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time." There have been some near misses in the years since Hodges was hit. Most recently, on June 26, people in Southern states reported seeing a fireball fly across the sky, and pieces of a meteorite hit a house in McDonough, Georgia, with some piercing its roof, denting its flooring, and missing a resident inside. He likely heard what sounded like a gunshot. "I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things," said Scott Harris, a researcher at the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences' department of geology, the university reported. "One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment. "There was enough energy when it hit the floor that it pulverized part of the material down to literal dust fragments." Harris studied the rocks and concluded the meteorite could have formed 4.56 billion years ago, making it older than the Earth. It is still being studied at the university. Every day, Earth is hit with more than 100 tons of space dust and debris. According to NASA, about once a year a car-sized asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere but burns up before it can touch down. One expert told Live Science that while it's impossible to know for sure how many asteroids hit Earth each year, he estimated "about 6,100 meteorite falls per year over the entire Earth, and about 1,800 over the land." Most of these go undetected, but occasionally they'll capture the public's attention, like Hodges' meteorite. For instance, in 1992 a 26-pound meteorite landed on a red Chevy Malibu in New York, and in 2013, one exploded over Russia. There has also been evidence of a meteorite killing a man and injuring another in 1888. Meteor Crater, which is almost a mile wide, in Arizona shows the impact a large meteorite can have. Prondzinski told Business Insider that in the years since Hodges was struck, her story remains popular, and people have contacted the museum about using the story in movies, plays, and even a graphic novel. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
