Changes

When Christiaan Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967, it was initially seen as remarkable scientific achievement, but overtime both the medical community and the general public were forced to re-evaluate heart transplants. The medical community quickly realized that the first transplants were little more than dangerous and unpredictable experiments. These operations were almost uniformly unsuccessful.  They failed because the surgical procedure was extremely complex, and the patients were prone to develop life threatening infections and organ rejection was incredibly common. Ultimately, heart transplants raised deep medical, ethical and even religious concerns that the medical community was forced to address.