IN: Barnard grew up in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Union of South Africa. His father, Adam Barnard, was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. One of his four brothers, Abraham, was a "blue baby" who died of a heart problem at the age of three (Barnard would later guess that it was tetralogy of Fallot). The family also experienced the loss of a daughter who was stillborn and who had been the fraternal twin of Barnard's older brother Johannes, who was twelve years older than Chris.

Following the first successful kidney transplant in 1953, in the United States, Barnard performed the second kidney transplant in South Africa in October 1967, the first being done in Johannesburg the previous year.  On 23 January 1964, James Hardy at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, performed the world's first heart transplant and world's first cardiac xenotransplant by transplanting the heart of a chimpanzee into a desperately ill and dying man. This heart did beat in the patient's chest for approximately 60 to 90 minutes. The patient, Boyd Rush, died without ever regaining consciousness.  Barnard had experimentally transplanted forty-eight hearts into dogs, which was about a fifth the number that Adrian Kantrowitz had performed at Maimonides Medical Center in New York and about a sixth the number Norman Shumway had performed at Stanford University in California. Barnard had no dogs which had survived longer than ten days, unlike Kantrowitz and Shumway who had had dogs survive for more than a year.  With the availability of new breakthroughs introduced by several pioneers, also including Richard Lower at the Medical College of Virginia, several surgical teams were in a position to prepare for a human heart transplant. Barnard had a patient willing to undergo the procedure, but as with other surgeons, he needed a suitable donor.  During the Apartheid era in South Africa, non-white persons and citizens were not given equal opportunities in the medical professions. At Groote Schuur Hospital, Hamilton Naki was an informally taught surgeon. He started out as a gardener and cleaner. One day he was asked to help out with an experiment on a giraffe. From this modest beginning, Naki became principal lab technician and taught hundreds of surgeons, and assisted with Barnard's organ transplant program. Barnard said, "Hamilton Naki had better technical skills than I did. He was a better craftsman than me, especially when it came to stitching, and had very good hands in the theatre". A popular myth, propagated principally by a widely discredited documentary film called Hidden Heart and an erroneous newspaper article , maintains incorrectly that Naki was present during the Washkansky transplant.

Were the transplants mostly successful?

OUT: Barnard had no dogs which had survived longer than ten days, unlike Kantrowitz and Shumway who had had dogs survive for more than a year.


IN: Seattle Slew (February 15, 1974 - May 7, 2002) was an American Thoroughbred race horse who won the Triple Crown in 1977--the tenth of twelve horses to accomplish the feat. He is the only horse to have won the Triple Crown while having been undefeated in any race previous. Honored as the 1977 Horse of the Year, he was also a champion at age two, three and four. In the Blood-Horse magazine List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century Seattle Slew was ranked ninth.

Seattle Slew stood at stud at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington for seven years, before moving to Three Chimneys Farm in Midway in 1985. He was the leading sire of 1984, when his son Swale (who died later that year) won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. His other progeny include the talented, ill-fated 1982 champion two-year-old filly, Landaluce, Slew o' Gold (winner of the 1983 Eclipse Award for Outstanding Three-Year-Old Male Horse and the 1984 Eclipse Award for Outstanding Older Male Horse), 1992 Horse of the Year A.P. Indy and the 2000 champion three-year-old filly Surfside. He is part of a unique three generation sequence of Belmont Stakes Winners: Seattle Slew (1977) - A.P. Indy (1992) - Rags to Riches (2004).  The primary conduit for Seattle Slew's continuation of his male line has been through A.P. Indy. A.P. Indy has done well at stud in Kentucky, siring (among others) the 2003 Horse of the Year, Mineshaft. One of Seattle Slew's most successful grandsons is the California champion Lava Man (sired by Slew City Slew). In 2006, Lava Man became the first horse to win the Santa Anita Handicap, Hollywood Gold Cup and Pacific Classic Stakes in the same year. Seattle Slew was also a leading broodmare sire, his daughters producing (among others) Cigar (leading North American money-earner of his day). Races in honor of his dam, My Charmer, include the My Charmer Handicap held at Florida's Calder Race Course annually and the My Charmer Stakes held at Kentucky's Turfway Park.  Rags to Riches, a granddaughter, won the 2007 Belmont Stakes - the third filly to win the race, after Ruthless in 1867 and Tanya in 1905. The victory earned jockey John Velazquez and trainer Todd Pletcher their first wins in any Triple Crown race. Rags To Riches was the 22nd filly to run in the Belmont. In 2002, ESPN telecast a "SportsCentury" on Seattle Slew.  In 2014, Seattle Slew's great-great grandson, California Chrome, won the Kentucky Derby  and the Preakness. California Chrome was the second Kentucky Derby winner in a row who was a sire-line descendant of Seattle Slew, following Orb in 2013. California Chrome's bid for the Triple Crown was defeated by another great-grandson of Seattle Slew, Tonalist, by leading sire Tapit. Tapit also sired the winners of the 2016 and 2017 Belmont Stakes, Creator and Tapwrit respectively.  25 years to the day after he won the Kentucky Derby, Seattle Slew died in his sleep at age 28. He was buried whole, the highest honor for a winning race horse, in the courtyard at Hill 'N' Dale Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, with his favorite blanket and a bag of peppermints which he liked to eat. Three Chimneys Farm erected a statue of Seattle Slew near the stallion barn in his honor. Since fellow Triple Crown winner and rival Affirmed had died the year before, he was the sole living Triple Crown winner. At the horse's death, there were no living Triple Crown winners for the first time since Sir Barton won the first Triple Crown in 1919. This phenomenon continued until American Pharoah's Triple Crown in 2015.

what did he do in his retirement?

OUT:
He was the leading sire of 1984, when his son Swale (who died later that year) won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes.