Dwight Emary Harken, MD
He was a giant in the field, a renaissance man. He often read books in the original Greek or Latin. John Abele |
Dwight Harken was one of the driving forces in AAMI’s creation in the 1960s and a leader in the association for many years. He served as AAMI’s president from 1969 to 1970.
It was he who organized the 1969 National Conference on Medical Device Regulation held in Bethesda, MD. This conference led to the release of the Cooper Report which outlined a practical context and framework for legislation that was ultimately approved in the 1976 Medical Device Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Significantly for AAMI, this conference was also a financial success and gave the young organization a firm financial foundation for the first time. Harken served as editor of AAMI’s journal, Medical Instrumentation, from 1974 to 1984.
John Post |
Harken was truly a pioneer in cardiac surgery. In 1948, he became one of the first surgeons to perform mitral valve surgery on a beating heart. In 1960, he was the first to successfully insert a caged ball valve in the normal anatomic position. He was also first to carry out cardioversion with a Lown cardioverter, first to establish that direct current defibrillation caused less myocardial damage, and first to prove the safety of and to implant a demand pacemaker in a human recipient.
Each year at AAMI's Annual Conference & Expo, a respected speaker is featured at a lecture in his name, the Dwight E. Harken Memorial Lecture.
40 Years of People, Progress, and Patient Safety: 2007, p.11.