Denton Cooley: When cardiac transplantation was first performed by Christiaan Barnard in 1967, it’s amazing how little we knew about the true meaning of life. Where does life reside? Is it in the heart, or is it in the brain? Where is it? What is life? That’s what got everyone in such a turmoil. That’s what brought up all of these moral and ethical issues. How could a man take the heart, a beating heart, out of one individual, and put it in another? No one was concerned about the recipient. You could see why he would like to have a nice, new heart, but what about the donor? At that time, so many people were completely ignorant about brain death. This was the first time it had been pointed out clearly, and in bold print, that there was such a thing as brain death, and that once the brain had been hopelessly destroyed, these other organs, which were still functioning, could be given to someone else.