Vladimir Demikhov

Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov (Russian: Влади́мир Петро́вич Де́михов; Khutor Kulikovsky, July 18, 1916 – Moscow, November 22, 1998) was a Soviet scientist and organ transplant pioneer, who performed several transplantations in the 1930s and 1950s, such as the transplantation of a heart into an animal and a lung-heart replacement in an animal. He is also well known for his transplantation of the heads of dogs.^[1] He conducted his dog head transplants during the 1950s, resulting in two-headed dogs, and this ultimately led to the head transplants in monkeys by Dr. Robert White, who was inspired by Demikhov's work.

The last dog head transplant performed by Vladimir Demikhov on January 13, 1959 in GDR

Demikhov coined the word transplantology, and his 1960 monograph “Experimental transplantation of vital organs”, for which he received his doctoral degree, later published in 1962 in New York, Berlin and Madrid, became the world’s first monograph on transplantology, and was for a long time the only monograph in the field of transplantation of organs and tissues.^[2] Christiaan Barnard, who performed the world's first heart transplant operation from one person to another person in 1967, twice visited Demikhov's laboratory in 1960 and 1963, and considered Demikhov his teacher.^[3]

Demikhov died in obscurity in 1998, but he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class, shortly before his death. He had also received a USSR State Prize.

The Russian documentary "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms" depicts similar experiments carried out in the Soviet Union.

Achievements

• 1937 – world's first artificial heart;
• 1946 – world's first heterotopic heart transplant into the chest;
• 1946 – world's first heart-lung transplant;
• 1947 – world's first lung transplant;
• 1948 – world's first liver transplant;
• 1951 – world's first orthotopic heart transplant;
• 1952 – world's first mammary-coronary anastomosis;
• 1954 – world's first head transplant;

In popular culture

Film of this surgery appears in "La rabbia" (Anger), a 1959 film in which Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giovannino Guareschi separately present hour-long episodes of their opposing political positions. The surgery segment is in the second part by Guareschi who vigorously condemns it.

Psychedelic rock musician Roky Erickson has a song called "Two Headed Dog (Red Temple Prayer)" which is about Demikhov's head transplant experiments.

MTV2 uses the two-headed dog experiment as its logo.

References

Bibliography

External links

• ASMO-press biography of Vladimir Demikhov
• Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society: The 20 Most Bizarre Experiments of All Time