Jewish Invention Myths: The Pacemaker
Continuing on with my articles exploding Jewish Invention Myths we next have the Pacemaker or more properly the Artificial Cardiac Pacemaker.
To begin with let’s quote the claim made by jews in support of their assertion.
Aish writes that:
‘As we know, Jews are also the brainkinder behind: the Cardiac Pacemaker’ (1)
The ‘Jewish Chronicle’ also writes how:
‘Cardiologist Paul Zoll invented both the pacemaker and the defibrillator.’ (2)
These aren’t the only sources making similar claims either, (3) but others are a bit more circumspect with the firm ‘Kosher River Cruise’ offering a slightly less strong claim in that Zoll only ‘played a pivotal role’ in the development of the pacemaker:
‘Jewish American cardiologist Paul Zoll played a pivotal role in the development of pacemakers and defibrillators. These life-saving inventions have revolutionized the field of medicine. Pacemakers, when implanted in the human body, help regulate irregular heartbeats, providing essential support to those with cardiac conditions. Defibrillators, on the other hand, can restart the heart in cases of arrhythmia and other heart problems. These innovations have become medical miracles, offering hope and improved quality of life for countless individuals battling heart conditions.’ (4)
While ‘Christian Learning’ reduces the claim yet further to Zoll ‘helping to pioneer’ the invention of the pacemaker:
‘These inventions are quite literally life savers and a huge accomplishment in the world of science and health. A pacemaker is inserted into a human body through surgery so that it can work to regulate the heartbeat with electrical impulses. A defibrillator can restart the heart in the case of a dysrhythmia emergency, which is when the heart beats irregularly.
For anyone suffering from a heart condition, these inventions were the medical miracle that was so desperately needed. It was the Jewish American cardiologist Paul Zoll who helped to pioneer the inventions of both the pacemaker and the defibrillator.’ (5)
The problem is indicated by the less-than-confident compromise positions used by ‘Kosher River Cruise’ and ‘Christian Learning’ in that you simply cannot credit Paul Zoll (let alone the jews in general with the invention of the pacemaker).
It is unclear why jews have been keen to falsely credit Paul Zoll with the pacemaker in 1952 since a jew named Albert Hyman coined the term for his device in 1932 and is sometimes (falsely in my opinion) ‘co-credited’ with the invention of the pacemaker (6) however the true inventors of the pacemaker were Mark Lidwill (often misspelled as Lidwell) and Edgar Booth in 1928 who were Australians. (7) Hyman only became interested in the idea of the pacemaker in 1930 some two years after Lidwill and Booth had invented it! (8)
Lidwill and Booth were building on a vast amount of European scientific research which had discovered the possibility of reviving and/or controlling the heart with electrical impulses/shocks with the contributions of Danish and British scientists Nickolev Abildgaard and John Alexander MacWilliam in 1775 and 1889 respectively being key. (9)
Nor can jews claim to have invented any other form of the pacemaker given that the first transcutaneous pacemaker was invented and tested by Canadians John Hopps, Wilfred Gordon Bigelow and John Callaghan in 1950. (10) Zoll explicitly only improved Hopps, Bigelow and Callaghan’s device in 1952; he didn’t invent the pacemaker. (11)
The wearable pacemaker is also not a jewish invention given that it was invented and first used by Earl Bakken and Clarence Walton Lillehei in 1958: both of whom were Americans of Norwegian origin. (12)
The implantable pacemaker is similarly not a jewish invention given that it was also first developed and implanted in 1958 by the Swedes Rune Elmqvist and Ake Senning in Solna, Sweden. (13)
So, no: the pacemaker was not only not a jewish invention but rather a creation of northern Europeans and especially of Scandinavians!
References
(1) https://aish.com/we-jews-little-known-jewish-inventions/
(2) https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/did-you-know-that-jews-invented-everything-g0z36e86
(3) For example: https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/
(4) https://kosherrivercruise.com/jewish-innovations-throughout-history-that-transformed-the-world/
(5) https://www.christianlearning.com/jewish-inventions/
(6) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232561/
(7) Ibid.; https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/top-ten-medical-inventions-pacemakers
(8) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569902/
(9) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232561/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cardiac_pacemaker#Origin
(10) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232561/
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Ibid.