Hamilton Naki

Hamilton Naki (26 June 1926 – 29 May 2005) was a laboratory assistant to cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. He was recognised for his surgical skills and for his ability to teach medical students and physicians such skills despite not having received a formal medical education, and took a leading role in organ transplant research on animals.[2]

Hamilton Naki
Born(1926-06-26)June 26, 1926
Ngcingwane, Dutywa, Transkei
DiedMay 29, 2005(2005-05-29) (aged 78)
Langa, Cape Town
Cause of deathHeart attack
NationalitySouth Africa
Children5
AwardsThe Bronze Order of Mapungubwe [1]
Scientific career
FieldsOrgan transplantation
InstitutionsUniversity of Cape Town

A controversy arose after his death in that at least five periodicals and the Associated Press retracted statements in their obituaries of Naki that claimed that he participated in the world's first human-to-human heart transplantation in 1967;[3] the incident has been cited as an example of inadequate fact checking by the newsmedia and delayed corrections of the errors.[4]

Early life

Naki was born to a poor family in Ngcingwane, a village in Centani in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.[5] He received six years of education up to the age of 14, after which he moved to Cape Town.[5] Beginning about 1940, he commuted from Langa, Cape Town to the University of Cape Town to work as a gardener,[6][5] specifically rolling grass tennis courts.[7]

Medical career and retirement

In 1954 Robert Goetz of the University's surgical faculty asked Naki to assist him with laboratory animals.[5] Naki's responsibilities progressed from cleaning cages to performing anaesthesia.[5] Most of Naki's work under Goetz involved anaesthetising dogs, but Naki also assisted in operating on a giraffe "to dissect the jugular venous valves to determine why giraffes do not faint when bending to drink."[7]

Several years after Goetz left, Naki started working for Christiaan Barnard in the laboratory as an assistant.[8] Barnard had studied open-heart surgery techniques in the United States and was bringing those techniques to South Africa.[5] Naki first performed anaesthesia on animals for Barnard, but was then "appointed principal surgical assistant of the laboratory because of his remarkable skill and dexterity."[7] Barnard was quoted as saying "If Hamilton had had the opportunity to study, he would probably have become a brilliant surgeon"[9] and that Naki was "one of the great researchers of all time in the field of heart transplants".[6]

In 1968, Barnard's cardiac surgical research team moved out of the surgical laboratory, and Naki helped develop the heterotopic or "piggyback" heart transplantation technique.[7] In the 1970s, Naki left Barnard's team and returned to the surgical laboratory, this time working on liver transplantation.[7] His contributions at this time were described as follows:

  • Rosemary Hickman, transplantation surgeon whom Naki assisted and taught in the laboratory, and who worked with Naki for nearly 30 years: "Despite his limited conventional education, he had an amazing ability to learn anatomical names and recognize anomalies. His skills ranged from assisting to operating and he frequently prepared the donor animal (sometimes single-handedly) while another team worked on the recipient."[7]
  • Del Khan, head of Groote Schuur Hospital's organ transplant unit, whom Naki taught in the laboratory: "A liver transplant on a pig in the U.S. would involve a team of two or three medically qualified surgeons… Hamilton can do this all on his own."[9]
  • Ralph Kirsch, head of the Liver Research Centre at the University of Cape Town: “He was one of those remarkable men who really come around once in a long time. As a man without any education, he mastered surgical techniques at the highest level and passed them on to young doctors."[10]
  • Barnard: "A liver transplant is much more difficult than a heart transplant… [doctors who work with Naki] tell me that Hamilton can do all the various aspects of liver transplantation, which I can't do. So technically, he is a better surgeon than I am."[9]

Naki taught many students during his career; although newsmedia accounts placed the number of students in the thousands, Hickman said that that number appears to have been exaggerated.[8] Naki assisted Hickman until his retirement in 1991,[6][8] after which he received "a gardener's pension: 760 rand, or about $275, a month."[11]

Personal life, post-retirement activities and recognition, and death

Naki was reported to be married with four sons and one daughter.[12] He lived in a small one-room house without electricity or running water[10][6] and sent "most of his pay to his wife and family, left behind in Transkei," but "could pay for only one of his five children to stay to the end of high school."[11] He was active in his church and read the Bible frequently.[7]

After retirement, Naki helped the community of Kentani, where part of his family lived, for example "in the construction of a school and in the provision of a mobile clinic"[7] by soliciting donations from his "medical contacts".[11] He received public recognition of his medical work after his retirement, including:

  • Metropolitan Eastern Cape Award, 2002.[13]
  • The Bronze Order of Mapungubwe, 2002, presented by President Thabo Mbeki.[10][14][15] One of the highest South African civil honours, this Order is "awarded to South African citizens for excellence and exceptional achievement."[16]
  • BTWSC Black S/Heroes Award, 2003.[17]
  • An honorary master's degree from the University of Cape Town in 2003, presented by Chancellor Graça Machel.[10][18] The honorary degree was described as MMed (Master of Medicine) in some sources[18][19] and MSc (Master of Science) in others.[20][6]
  • Inclusion in a "senior civil guard of honour" at the 2004 opening of the Parliament of South Africa.[21]
  • In August 2017, the plain opposite the Christian Barnard Hospital in Cape Town was renamed from Salazar Plain to Hamilton Naki Square.[22]

He died in Langa on 29 May 2005, aged 78, of "heart trouble."[6]

Controversy concerning participation in 1967 heart transplantation

After Naki's death, obituaries published 9 June 2005 to 2 July 2005 in at least two medical journals (BMJ and The Lancet), one magazine (The Economist), two newspapers (The Independent and The New York Times), and an unknown number of newspapers publishing Associated Press stories, printed obituaries that made the following claims about Naki's participation in the world's first human-to-human heart transplantation:

  • That Barnard had asked Groote Schuur Hospital for permission for Naki to be on the transplant team, and that permission was given in secret because of hospital rules and apartheid laws.[11] Under apartheid, black health care providers could not have contact with white patients.[23]
  • That on 3 December 1967, Naki removed the heart of the deceased Denise Darvall, who was white, for transplantation into Louis Washkansky by Barnard.[20][11][12][10][6][23]

Between 14 July 2005 and 3 September 2005, the five aforementioned periodicals and the Associated Press issued formal retractions of statements in their obituaries of Naki that claimed that he participated in the world's first human-to-human heart transplantation.[24][25][26][27][28][23] The reasons given for the initial mistakes included:

  • The Economist stated that its obituary was based on Naki's "own words in interviews," but that Naki's role "was gradually embellished in post-apartheid, black-ruled South Africa" and that Naki came to believe the story himself.[25] Furthermore, the magazine reported that the University of Cape Town did not initially deny the story because it appeared "ridiculous."[25]
  • The author of the BMJ and The Independent obituaries wrote that she had "relied on secondary sources" such as The Economist.[29]
  • In an article published the same day as its correction, the New York Times concluded that reports that Naki was involved in the 1967 transplantation emerged "most prominently" in a 2003 article in The Guardian.[8] The 2003 article mentioned that "a team led by Mr. Naki went to work, a 48-hour marathon" to remove the donor heart.[5]
  • The Associated Press cited a reliance on previous (1993 and 2003) Associated Press articles.[23]

Evidence cited in 2005 that Naki was not present at the first transplant included:

  • Surgeons at the hospital where the 1967 transplantation was performed "assured" The Economist that Naki "was nowhere near the operating theatre."[25]
  • The Economist reported that "a source close to" Naki said that Naki said that he had heard of the first heart transplant "on the radio."[25]
  • The chief of the laboratory in which Naki worked as of 1967 stated that Naki at the time was a scrub nurse and that Victor Pick was the surgical assistant; Naki became surgical assistant only after Pick died in the early 1970s and only "at the experimental surgical operating table."[30]
  • Hickman was quoted as saying that Naki "was an honest man and he wouldn't have made that claim [of being present at the 1967 transplanation]".[8]
  • Filmmaker Dirk de Villiers stated that he heard Naki "tell other people" that he assisted in the transplant but did not say this to de Villiers in private.[8]
  • David Dent, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Cape Town University as of 2005, asserted that he worked with Naki "on transplanting pigs' livers" in 1967, but that technicians such as Naki did not perform surgeries in hospitals.[8]
  • In a letter to BMJ, Dent wrote that Naki "did not participate in the first heart transplant, did not ever operate on humans, nor ever work in Groote Schuur Hospital…. The suggestion that Hamilton Naki performed the donor operation was never mentioned in life by the man himself, by the department of cardiac surgery, or by the university in his citation for his honorary degree in 2003. It was not mentioned after his death at his family funeral, or at the memorial service in the medical school experimental laboratory."[19]
  • Chris Logan, author of a biography of Barnard,[31] wrote that Naki "did not at any stage assist in the first or subsequent human heart transplant operations, nor could he have done under the apartheid laws at the time".[20]
  • It was effectively illegal for blacks to do surgery on whites under apartheid, and it is beyond the bounds of probability that an untrained black technician would have been permitted to undertake such an operation, or that his participation in such a high-profile operation at a leading white hospital could have avoided public notice during apartheid.

Instead, the surgeons who removed the heart from the donor were Marius Barnard (Christiaan Barnard's brother) and Terry O'Donovan.[25][27]

Despite the retractions, the claim that Naki participated in the 1967 heart transplantation has been perpetuated in journal articles and books published after 2005. Examples include:

  • "In December 1967… Naki, with amazing dexterity, removed the donor heart from Darval, irrigated it with electrolyte solution and passed it to Barnard."[32]
  • "1967 Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard of South Africa performed the world's first human heart transplant operation… Working with a team that included… black South African surgeon Hamilton Naki…."[33]
  • "One of the most interesting people I learned and read about was Hamilton Naki. He assisted Dr. Barnard with the first transplant in 1967…."[34]

A 2007 book traced the origin of the incorrect story to a 1993 article in the Associated Press that stated "Barnard had Naki on his heart-transplant backup team. … When Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967, Naki was part of the backup team at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town."[4][9] The story's "blossom[ing] into accepted fact" was partly attributed to neither Barnard's nor Naki's taking steps to refute the story.[4] The 2007 book noted that the 2005 corrections in the newsmedia "did not include any statement about adopting new procedures to prevent the same thing from happening again."[4]

A documentary film Hidden Heart which was released widely in 2009 included interviews with Christiaan Barnard and Naki suggesting that Naki was present at the 1967 heart transplantation.[35][36] Marius Barnard was quoted as describing the claims in the film that Naki removed the donor heart as "rubbish, a joke, it’s a total distortion of the facts"[37] and as stating that Naki was at the time "in his bed, about 8 km away from Groote Schuur".[38] The co-director of the film "acknowledge[d] that Naki was not present the night of the operation."[37] A South African Broadcasting Corporation investigation after the release of the film quoted five people about the event:[39]

  • Tollie Lambrechts, a member of the transplantation team, said Naki "was definitely not in the operating room on that night."
  • Dene Friedmann, a member of the transplantation team, said Naki "was not here that night, the only people here were the ones that would actually do the work. Hamilton never worked in the theatres. He wasn’t allowed to operate on a human being without a medical and surgical degree."
  • Hickman said that Naki's being there was "highly unlikely."
  • The former wife of Barnard stated that Barnard "never mentioned Naki was there the evening of the first transplant."
  • Naki’s youngest son said that Naki was "the one who took out the heart and gave it to Chris Barnard." However, his son could not have been a witness to the operation, and was more likely to have heard the myth later.

References
  1. Zühlke, Liesl; Mayosi, Bongani M. (December 2017). "The life and the legacy of Hamilton Naki: Experimental heart transplant surgeon and teacher". The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. 36 (12): 1309–1310. doi:10.1016/j.healun.2017.10.006. PMID 29173393.
  2. Alistair Leithead (9 May 2003). "Gardener behind Africa's heart pioneer". BBC News. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
  3. For instance, in:
  4. Silverman, Craig (2009). "Too Incredible Not to Report". Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech. pp. 219–224. ISBN 978-1-4027-6564-3.
  5. Carroll R. "Two men transplanted the first human heart. One ended up rich and famous – the other had to pretend to be a gardener. Until now". Archived from the original on 25 April 2003. Retrieved 28 March 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) The Guardian 25 April 2003. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  6. Fox M. Hamilton Naki, 78, self-taught surgeon, dies. New York Times 11 June 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  7. Hickman, Rosemary (1 April 1999). "From Tennis Courts to Transplants". Archives of Surgery. 134 (4): 451–2. doi:10.1001/archsurg.134.4.451. PMID 10199323.
  8. Wines M. Accounts of South African's career now seen as overstated. New York Times 27 August 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  9. Venter S. Hamilton Naki: from gardener to surgeon. Associated Press 4 April 1993.
  10. Kapp, Clare (July 2005). "Hamilton Naki". The Lancet. 366 (9479): 22. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)66811-0. PMID 16127806. S2CID 43044772.
  11. Hamilton Naki, an unrecognised surgical pioneer, died on May 29th, aged 78. The Economist 9 June 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  12. Richmond C. Hamilton Naki. Surgical assistant to Christiaan Barnard. The Independent 11 June 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  13. Salayedwa A. Macozoma laments loss of skilled youth. Archived 17 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine Daily Dispatch (South Africa) 30 September 2002. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  14. The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa. The Order of Mapungubwe. List of recipients. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  15. South African Press Association. Mbeki first recipient of new national orders. Archived 20 November 2003 at the Wayback Machine Daily Dispatch (South Africa) 10 December 2002. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  16. The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa. National Orders. The Order of Mapungubwe. Archived 15 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  17. Mbakwe T. Hamilton Naki, the unsung hero. New African January 2004:30–32. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  18. Munnion C. 'Gardener' honoured with degree in medicine. The Telegraph (London) 23 June 2003. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  19. Dent, David M (3 September 2005). "Obituary of Hamilton Naki: Obituary was historically inaccurate". BMJ. 331 (7515): 517.1. doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7515.517. PMC 1199042.
  20. "Hamilton Naki". BMJ. 330 (7506): 1511. 25 June 2005. doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7506.1511. S2CID 220095602.
  21. Adams S. VIPs for Mbeki's guard of honour. IOL (Independent Online) News (South Africa) 20 May 2004. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  22. City of Cape Town renames square on Foreshore after Hamilton Naki
  23. "Hamilton Naki". Washington Post. 28 August 2005.
  24. "Hamilton Naki". BMJ. 331 (7515): 519.7. 3 September 2005. doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7515.519-f. S2CID 220102255.
  25. Hamilton Naki. Apartheid's shadow. How an inspiring life became distorted by politics. The Economist 14 July 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  26. Richmond C. Correction. The Independent 24 August 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  27. "Department of Error". The Lancet. 366 (9485): 548. August 2005. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67097-3. S2CID 54344094.
  28. Editors' note. New York Times 27 August 2005. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  29. Richmond, Caroline (3 September 2005). "Obituary of Hamilton Naki: Author's reply". BMJ. 331 (7515): 517.2. doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7515.517-a. PMC 1199074.
  30. Terblanche, John (21 May 2008). "Mr Hamilton Naki". South African Medical Journal. 95 (8): 539–40. doi:10.7196/SAMJ.1766 (inactive 10 January 2021). PMID 16200991.CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2021 (link)
  31. Logan C. Celebrity surgeon: Christiaan Barnard, a life. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2003. ISBN 1-86842-163-5.
  32. Nzerue, Chike M. (2006). "Hamilton Naki, transplant surgeon". Journal of the National Medical Association. 98 (3): 448–449. PMC 2576125. PMID 16573312.
  33. 1000 events that shaped the world. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2007. Page 367. ISBN 978-1-4262-0192-9.
  34. Perkins K. The climb of my life: scaling mountains with a borrowed heart. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Page 171. ISBN 978-0-7425-5877-9.
  35. Sliwa, Karen (September 2009). "The story of Hamilton Naki and Christiaan Barnard". The Lancet. 374 (9692): 775. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61579-8. S2CID 54368674.
  36. McKay R. Heart movie skips a beat. Times Live (South Africa) 1 September 2009. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  37. Berger S. Inspiring tale dismissed as 'rubbish.' Archived 27 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine The National (Abu Dhabi) 4 June 2009. Retrieved 14 August 2010.
  38. October A. Dokkie 'verdraai' Barnard-verhaal. Die Burger 2 June 2009. Retrieved 14 August 2010.
  39. "Special assignment. The Hamilton Naki story" (PDF). South African Broadcasting Corporation News. 2 June 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 July 2011. Retrieved 4 September 2011.

Further reading
  • Cheng, Tsung O. (February 2006). "Hamilton Naki and Christiaan Barnard Versus Vivien Thomas and Alfred Blalock: Similarities and Dissimilarities". The American Journal of Cardiology. 97 (3): 435–436. doi:10.1016/j.amjcard.2005.10.002. PMID 16442414.
  • Pendergast S, Pendergast T. Contemporary Black biography. Volume 63. Profiles from the international Black community. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7876-7935-4.
  • Williams M. Black scientists & inventors. Book 3. London: BIS Publications, 2007. ISBN 978-1-903289-99-0.
  • Cotton, Michael; Hickman, Rosemary; Mall, Anwar Suleman (July 2014). "Hamilton Naki, his life, and his role in the first heart transplant". The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 96 (7): 224–227. doi:10.1308/003588414X13814021679915.
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