Plastic Heart Pioneer Going Back To America

Press, Volume C, Issue 29480, 5 April 1961, Page 9

Plastic Heart Pioneer Going Back To America

(Mew Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 4. New Zealand will lose one of the world's most brilliant heart surgeons in June because he has been unable to get financial backing here tor his research. He is Dr. Selwyn McCabe, aged 35, single, who has pioneered the development of plastic hearts during the last 10 years in the United States. He returned last October to carry on his work in New Zealand's name and because he needed a sponsor who was unfettered by political motives. Dr. McCabe has been unable to find anyone to finance his pioneering research. He said in Auckland today that there was "no limit" to the amount which could be spent on developing his plastic heart. “But £lO.OOO would be sufficient to give the work a tremendous boost,” he said. The superintendent of Green Lane Hospital (Dr. J. D. Sinclair) said today that New Zealand hospitals had no facilities for “backroom research” by medical engineers. Dr. McCabe has now- received an offer from the University of Caifornia and expects to be back in the United States in May or June. New Zealand seemed to offer the freedom for research work, but not the money, he said. The next steps in his work would be a series of experi-

ments to perfect certain aspects of heart surgery. The plastic heart was already designed and manufactured. It was now hoped to reduce the mortality rate among “blue babies” by perfecting the pump mechanism of artificial hearts.