An earlier post discussed the falsification of history in the film Hidden Heart. Refer: Swiss film revises South African heart transplant history.
Die Burger has followed up with two articles which provide more background on the contributions of Hamilton Naki. I have roughly translated the main points:
Annette Evans from Stellenbosch wrote that she worked as research technician in 1961-62 under Dr Chris Barnard. She states that the photo taken of Naki was not in an Operating Room, but in actual fact in a surgical research laboratory in the mortuary in Anzio street - not even situated on the premises of Groote Schuur hospital itself. They referred to the laboratory as the “doglab”, because research was done on dogs.
Hamilton’s (they called him “Hammy”) job was to prepare dogs for surgery by applying general anaesthesia, opening the chest, stop bleeding and closing the incision after the operation. He worked for the surgical research technicians studying under Dr Chris Barnard and Professor Jannie Louw. According to Evans, Hamilton was trustworthy and reliable. He would have gained a lot of experience, as they did numerous operations per week on dogs, but he would never be involved in operations on humans. They loved him and respected him because of his dedication.
Evans reckons the operations carried out on dogs inevitably resulted in the animals suffering, hence the reason for not publicly disclosing the activities of the “doglab”.
In another article, Dr Marius Barnard (the brother of Dr Chris Barnard and who assisted him in the pioneering human heart transplant), said the film which suggests that Hamilton Naki did not receive recognition due to political reasons, is a blatant distortion of the facts. He says it makes a farce of the medical breakthrough achieved by Chris Barnard.
He acknowledged that Naki contributed in the experimental research lab, but the closest he ever came to the Operating Room was about 8km - the distance between the hospital and where Naki stayed.
Mr Hennie Joubert, curator of the heart museum at Groote Schuur, also confirmed that Naki contributed to the research lab activities, but that the movie isn’t factually correct.
Professor Rosemary Hickman, surgeon for more than 30 years at Groote Schuur, said it is a pity that political agenda should triumph over the dedication and hard work of Hamilton Naki - a wonderful opportunity to portray the result of hard work has been undone by making Hamilton a political pawn.
9 Opinion(s):
Good post Islandshark and what is good to see is that Beeld and others have immediately climbed in to correct the falsehoods. It is fortunate that Marius Barnard and others are still around to set matters right. What I cannot understand is what the Swiss thought they would gain from such egregious lies. Brownie points from blacks? Next they'll be telling us blacks built the pyramids.
Thanks, Doberman.
I don't understand the Swiss perspective either. One would think that they have more important issues to deal with than such propaganda nonsense.
Is it merely a case of liberal white guilt?
Generally the Swiss don't have a F#@K whitey attitude. They are quite conservative and are a little more picky about who they let into their country than Britain and many other European nations.
There is a sick twisted doos in every family (two in mine).
I would hope a lot more people who are aware of the actual fact take this up and prove it is BULLSHIT.
Sic Vis Pacem, Para Bellum!
Well Doberman there are debates raging claiming that blacks built the pyramids. Apparently Pharaoh was suppressing the blacks too.
What would the point be to this claim of heart surgery to me makes no sense.
Vot iz ze beeg fuss aboust! He is afterall a "Dog"tor not a doctorr. It vos lost in ze trangslation. Danke.
Well, black Egyptian (Nubians) were involved in the pyramids. Surely you knew that?
Typical of the bankers who own Switzerland!
Incredible that some don't understand their hidden agenda!
The point must obviously have been to discredit the work of Dr Barnard because he was a White South African which of course is still considered to be a reviled group.
"Jul 14th 2005
ON JUNE 11th this year, The Economist published an obituary of Hamilton Naki, a black medical researcher at the University of Cape Town. In that obituary, we described Mr Naki assisting in the first human heart transplant by removing the heart from the donor, Denise Darvall. Our account was drawn directly from Mr Naki's own words in interviews.
We have since been assured by surgeons at Groote Schuur, the hospital where the transplant was performed, that Mr Naki was nowhere near the operating theatre. As a black, and as a person with no formal medical qualifications, he was not allowed to be. The surgeons who removed the donor's heart were Marius Barnard, Christiaan Barnard's brother, and Terry O'Donovan. A source close to Mr Naki once asked him where he was when he first heard about the transplant. He replied that he had heard of it on the radio. Later, he apparently changed his story.
He changed it, it seems, not simply because of the confusion of old age, but because of pressure from those around him. Mr Naki was already a hero, as a man of scant education who had trained himself to carry out extremely difficult transplants on animals. He was also a martyr to apartheid: a man debarred from the proper exercise of his skills, and even from fair pay, by an iniquitous regime. (Christiaan Barnard admitted that, “given the opportunity”, Mr Naki would have been “a better surgeon than me”.) For both reasons, his role was gradually embellished in post-apartheid, black-ruled South Africa. By the end, he himself came to believe it.
The process was assisted by hints from Barnard that Mr Naki had helped him in ways that were not fully known, and by the fact that, under apartheid, any such help on white human subjects would have had to be secret anyway. In the end, a story took shape that looked so plausible to the outside world that not only ourselves, but the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and many others accepted it. Yet the same story appeared so ridiculous to the University of Cape Town, staff say, that they did not trouble to deny it.
To report this misapprehension is doubly sad, apart from our own regret at being caught up in it. It is sad that the shadow of apartheid is still so long in South Africa that blacks and whites can tell the same narrative in quite different ways, each suspecting the motives of the other. And it is especially tragic that it should have involved Mr Naki, a man considered “wonderful” by both sides, black and white, and whose life should still be seen as an inspiration. "
http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4174683
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