James Hardy (surgeon)

James D. Hardy (1918 to 2003) was an American surgeon remembered for two firsts in transplant medicine. On 11 June 1963 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson he performed the world's first lung transplant, into a patient named John Russell, who lived for 18 days. On 24 January 1964, at the same hospital, he attempted the first modern heart transplant between species, placing a chimpanzee heart in the chest of a comatose and dying man, Boyd Rush; the heart beat for about an hour and Rush died without regaining consciousness. The second operation remains disputed in medical ethics, because the consent form did not disclose that a chimpanzee heart might be used and because Hardy asked the four doctors assisting him to vote on whether to proceed. Both operations are part of the early record of organ replacement surgery, and Hardy is cited for the human lung and animal heart cases.