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"Is It Presumptuous?" When he looks farthest ahead through the tops of his trifocals and peers toward the artificial heart that may be implanted permanently, DeBakey says: "It is deficiencies in materials and our lack of knowledge about how they will work over a long period that are holding us up. The materials we have, good as they are, still damage the blood to some extent, and they may become rigid after long use. I am confident that if $50 million were made available today for just this kind of research, an artificial heart, or the vital parts of one, could be ready for permanent implantation within three to five years."
Medicine and surgery, Dr. DeBakey insists, have solved most of the problems of heart replacement that lie within their specific fields. What is now needed is a total effort in cooperation with physicists and industry to solve the problems of materials and power supply. "If artificial hearts can work, as they have, for 40 hours or more," says Michael DeBakey, "is it presumptuous to say that it could be done for 40 days or 40 years? Today it may be only a dream; tomorrow it will be a reality."
* One of the nation's greatest teachers and practitioners of surgery, who first indicted smoking as a major factor in the cause of lung cancer. Many of DeBakey's early writings were on this subject. The admiring DeBakeys have middle-named two of their four sons Alton and Ochsner.