Who among the following had performed the world's first heart transplant ?

The answer is C. The option is a misspelling of Christiaan Barnard, the South African surgeon who performed the first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, on 3 December 1967. The patient, Louis Washkansky, survived about 18 days.

• A) Dr. Venugopal: He is an Indian cardiac surgeon who performed India's first heart transplant in Chennai in 1994. That is a national milestone, not the world's first.
• B) William Harvey: The 17th-century English physician described the circulation of blood in De Motu Cordis (1628). He had nothing to do with transplantation.
• D) William Betrick: No recognised transplant pioneer goes by this name, so it is a distractor.

The core concept is the history of organ transplantation, which connects to the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994 (amended in 2011) and the brain-death and deceased-donor framework. That is a useful Mains angle on organ donation policy and ethics.

Trap: Aspirants confuse "first" with "first successful" or "first in India", or pick Harvey because he is the best-known name in the heart's history.