Page 47 - Waves Magazine July 2019

was in the car with him, and whether he had young people strongly opposed. It was also heart is now in the Smithsonian Institution
been drinking. On July 25, Kennedy pleaded the era of the civil rights movement, a period in Washington.
guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, of great unrest and protest.
received a two-month suspended sentence, Its legacy can be seen in the mechanical
and had his license suspended for a year. Woodstock was an opportunity for people to cardiac parts people now take for grant-
That evening, in a televised statement, he escape into music and spread a message of ed -- valves, pacemakers and, most of all,
called the delayed reporting of the accident unity and peace. Despite—or because of—a support devices that currently help diseased
“indefensible” but vehemently denied that lot of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and rain, Wood- hearts better pump blood. Nothing stimu-
he been involved in any improprieties with stock was a peaceful celebration and earned its lated interest in the new field like Cooley’s
Kopechne. He also asked his constituents to hallowed place in pop culture history. audacious effort to save a dying patient with
help him decide whether to continue his po- the help of a device previously deemed not
litical career. Receiving a positive response, ready for use in people.
he resumed his senatorial duties at the end
of a month. Houston Surgeon Implants First
Artificial Heart
Drugs, Sex, And Rock And
Roll A little closer to home,
on April 04, 1969,
On August 15, 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley
the Woodstock implanted the first
Music Festival took complete artificial heart
place, drawing more in a human being. The
than a half-million device, developed at
people to a dairy Cooley’s Cullen Cardiovascular Laboratories
farm in Bethel, New in Houston, kept the patient, Haskell Karp,
York. The “three days of peace and music” alive for sixty-four hours until a suitable heart
became the defining counterculture event donor was found. Karp died thirty-two hours
of the 1960s—a peaceful happening despite after receiving a new human heart, from
the combination of drugs, sex, and rock and pneumonia and renal failure, but his experi-
roll. The country was deep into the contro- ence proved the viability of the artificial heart
versial Vietnam War, a conflict that many as a temporary measure. That first artificial
Waves Magazine | July 2019 Issue | 47