Dr. Robert Jarvik

Dr. Robert Jarvik made news around the world in 1982 when a mechanical artificial heart he had designed, the Jarvik 7, was successfully implanted in a living human being. By his own account, Jarvik had been an undistinguished undergraduate student who was rejected by numerous medical schools. He finally won admission to the University of Utah medical school on the strength of his own experiments with artificial hearts in laboratory animals. At Utah, he joined the artificial organs program headed by Dr. Willem Kolff, inventor of the first dialysis machine. The Jarvik 7 artificial heart was first implanted in a human patient, dentist Barney Clark, by Dr. William C. DeVries, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Utah who was also chairman of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery at the Salt Lake veterans hospital. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1983 program in Coronado, California, Dr. Jarvik recounts the process of designing the artificial heart. He urges the Academy's student delegates to draw their own conclusions, based on evidence and experience, rather than relying on conventional wisdom. He is joined in the discussion by Dr. DeVries, who recalls Barney Clark's courage in submitting to experimental surgery. DeVries encourages the student delegates to preserve their individuality while seeking out strong teams of co-workers. Since their appearance at the Academy, Robert Jarvik has continued his work developing medical devices as an entrepreneur and as an advisor to pharmaceutical companies. Dr. DeVries went on to teach surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.