Remembering Kourken Noris Bedirian

Vaհe H Apelian

 

I happened to read today that “A three-year-old Nelore cow in Brazil has made agricultural history. Carina FIV do Kado sold for a record-breaking $4.74 million at auction, officially earning her a Guinness World Record as the most expensive cow ever sold. But here's the catch: She's not worth millions for her meat. She's worth millions for her genetics.”

Inevitably Kourken Bedirian came to my mind. Kourken passed away on February 13, 2023 in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. He was a pioneer in In-vitro fertilization (IVF) in cattle, where a donor cow's eggs are collected, fertiliized and then transferred into recipient cows or frozen for later use.

I quote: “Dr. Kourken Bedirian was a pioneer in transcontinental cow embryo transfer and the commercial application of cattle embryo transfers using a mobile laboratory. He performed the first commercial cattle embryo transfers by exporting Holstein cow embryos from Canada to Hungary. He developed commercial applications for cattle embryos directly on farms utilizing mobile laboratory setups. He earned his Ph.D. in Animal Sciences from McGill University and achieved international acclaim for his research in bovine fertilization and embryo transfer.” 

On August 20, 1979, the internationally acclaimed Time magazine wrote his pioneering work. I quote: “Dr. Kourken Bedirian, a Canadian physiologist who has pioneered the transfer of cow embryos, says that the success rate has averaged more than 60%. About 10,000 transferred calves have been born since the process moved from the lab to the barn in the early 1970s, and the procedure is rapidly spreading in the U.S. and Canada. For Bossie, motherhood will never be quite the same again.”

Bossie is a traditional term for a cow. Indeed so, for this Brazilian bossie, her motherhood has been worth $ 4.7 million, and her eggs have been valued at $100,000 each. Carina’s eggs will be harvested and sold off individually to different ranchers. The fertilized eggs will be implanted in surrogate cows, a procedure Dr. Kourken Noris Bedirian pioneered.

Kourken was born in Keurkune, Kessab. His preliminary education was in village at a time when the village’s church, also served as clasroom. After which he has continued his secondary education in Kessab, and then Beirut. Subsequently, he attended the American University of Beirut studying at the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, from which he received his Master of Science degree in 1964. His major is listed Animal production-Animal Deseases and his Minor, poultry production. After immigrating to Canada, he furthered his education at McGill University and receive his PhD. His dissertation is titled “Recovery, Fertilization and Transfer of Bovine Eggs” (1973).

He was a true Kessabtsi. I have retained the following from him in my files, “Congratulations Vahe ! What a superb way of describing Keurkune’s long gone olive oil industry and thus preserving it in our archives, not to mention your refreshment of our memories of the delicious taste of freshly baked bread (toniri hats) dipped in freshly squeezed olive oil (dsennoon).”

I quote from his obituary: “He was loved and cherished by many people including: his daughters, Naro (Dennis) and Vani (Mark); his nephew Mher (Niki); his grandchildren, Sam, Annie, Daniel, Duncan, Alex and Leo; his parents, Noris Bedirian and Lydia Bedirian (Ashekian); his siblings, Assadour (Sona), Asdghig (Joseph), Parouhi (Zohrab), Loucine and Papken (Wende); and his nieces and nephews, Manas, Moushegh, Steve, Ara, Zeron, Vani, Ankiné, Krysia, Kristen, Vahakn, Hovag, Hratch, Chanel and Barkev.”

May his memory remain unfading.

Յիշատակը անթառամ մնայ