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I thought #BlackHistoryMonth (Europe) would be a great opportunity to make a video about 2 cardiac surgery stories that I love. Behind the blockbusting first Tetralogy operation & the first heart transplant were black men working in deeply racist times.
Followers/readers of @FredWuMD & @thomasngmorris will know these well. Hamilton Naki left school at 14 and worked as a gardener in Cape Town but ended up performing heart & liver transplants on dogs and is credited with devising the heterotopic heart transplant 
Vivien Thomas saw the Great Depression dash his hopes of medical school so took a job as Alfred Blalock's lab assistant and proved himself a gifted and innovative surgeon, instrumental in achieving the first successful operation for 'Blue Baby Syndrome'
I especially like this story as it shows how a white man (Blalock), a Jewish woman (Taussig) and a black man (Thomas) came together in 1940s America to achieve something monumental. It wasn't without problems (Thomas's name was left off the publications) but it was progress.
I'll be honest, the video is performing very poorly & has brought the racists out but that's more than made up for by lovely comments from BTT-shunt recipients that didn't know the story & students inspired by these heroes. cc:@MinoritySTEM @realscientists @whynotadoc @jesswade
