For more than 50 years, the medical community has tried to create an artificial heart. Texas Monthly executive editor Mimi Swartz joins us to talk about the challenges of creating a heart – and why the only option for patients in need of one remains a transplant. Her new book is called “Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart” (Crown Publishing).
Dr. Denton A. Cooley holds up a Jarvick-7 heart pump model at a press conference on Tuesday, April 20, 1989 in Houston, while discussing the 20 year anniversary of the first implant of an artificial heart in a man. Cooley was the surgeon who performed the operation in 1969. Pam MacDonald/AP Photo
