Robert Jarvik: My family lived in Stamford, Connecticut. For vacations every summer we’d go sailing and a lot of times we’d go up to Mystic Seaport,
which was an old whaling community. And they had these fabulous model ships,
so I started to build little model ships, that started my interest in machining,
which later led to machining of high precision parts for the artificial heart.
So at Syracuse, I began in the School of Architecture, taking the initial courses as a freshman.
But during my freshman year, my father had a major health problem, which was an aneurysm of the aorta.
He went to Texas and Dr. DeBakey operated on him and that impressed me a lot.
He got sick, he got cured with a technology and I switched my interests to treatments for the heart.
Dr. Bartley Griffith: Rob saw heart failure as a huge problem. He was around luminaries, you know his background included the University of Utah.
These wonderful influences on him I think stimulated him to become, you know, an M.D.,
but use that M.D. as the fulcrum to focus his science and his genius in invention to solve problems that surgeons and medicine could not solve.
Archival News Clip: December 2nd, 1982, Salt Lake City, Utah.
In a 12-hour operation, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Center implant the first permanent artificial heart in the chest of a 61-year-old retired dentist from Seattle, Washington. His name—Barney Clark.
Robert Jarvik: It was riveting, but it was terrifying, especially at the point when the heart was in and there were some tears in the lungs and some problems that looked like they could be insurmountable, that had to be fixed right then. I don’t think I’ve had another experience of that kind of fear elsewhere and that kind of elation when it all worked.
Dr. Bartley Griffith: Rob pivoted to use a ventricular assist device that was very much revolutionary at the time,
one that would be incorporated within the heart itself. Everybody else was kind of following everybody else, not Rob.
He had his own solution to problems and it was a new design. And that’s classic Jarvik.
Robert Jarvik: So the whole emphasis on the Jarvik 2000 was to avoid infection, to have adequate flow, to have extremely good durability,
to have something that was silent, to have something that was easy to take care of and use, to have a small enough battery so that you could carry that conveniently.
Gerald Mirenberg: This is the device and this is the battery, and that’s all there is to it.
I was sick, and I was at the hospital, and then this thing came available and I, I grabbed it. I don’t think I’d be here without it.
Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier: And now today we have patients with these sort of pumps that have had them in for over 12 years and they’re still working.
And Rob’s work was the Kitty Hawk of the field in many ways.
Robert Jarvik: Individuals have completely different attitudes towards receiving an artificial heart.
It has to be used in the right people to get really excellent results. You have to have compassion for the patients who are trying to make decisions about this when they’re so sick it’s hard for them to think also.
Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier: I was always very impressed with his, his personal involvement with a patient, and his personal concern about their welfare.
Dr. Bartley Griffith: Rob has been able to continue to be a bedside, caring person, so he loves to come and visit a patient that has one of his pumps.
He doesn’t do that for any kind of publicity or anything. He really cares about the patients.
Gerald Mirenberg: He’s very quiet, and he knows what he’s doing. You know with him doing it and me going with it, it’s just a perfect match.
Dr. Bartley Griffith: The field sees Rob as this kind of creative, Mozartian genius, you know, who was his own man.
Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier: The whole field would not really in my opinion be where it is today without Rob’s contributions.
Robert Jarvik: There still are in the range of 50 to 100-thousand patients a year who die who could receive artificial hearts.
So there’s a huge additional need, and from a point of, of my work and my career and our company,
what we need to do is to enter a phase of growth. There’s always room for improvement.