This is True®
by Randy CassinghamRandy Cassingham’s Honorary Unsubscribe Recognizes the Unknown, the Forgotten and the Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives
Transplant pioneer Joseph E. Murray
A doctor, Murray was “just” a plastic surgeon. He specialized in reconstruction — repairing the damage of accidents, burns, and genetic defects — but was famous for something else. On December 23, 1954, he led the team that performed the first successful human organ transplant: a kidney, from a healthy 23-year-old man to his sickly twin brother. It worked, but “We were criticized for playing God,” he said years later. The surgical team had reservations about “taking a normal person and doing a major operation not for his benefit but for another person’s,” but indeed both patients survived. (The recipient, Richard Herrick, lived for eight years, dying when his disease destroyed the donated kidney; his brother, Ronald, lived to 79.) Murray had been told his idea of transplanting organs was a “fringe” idea that should be abandoned as a “clinical dead end,” but his research before and after the operation opened the door for the successful transplants of not just kidneys, but livers, hearts, lungs, and other organs, which led him to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 (shared with E. Donnall Thomas, a pioneer in bone marrow transplantation. Dr. Thomas died in October.) Murray went on to train other doctors in transplantation, leveraging his knowledge to help hundreds of thousands of patients. He then went back to reconstructive plastic surgery. He retired to the lecture circuit, where he would tell audiences “It’s the best time ever to be a doctor, because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.” Dr. Murray died on November 26 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — the same hospital where he performed that first-ever transplant — after a stroke. He was 93.
From This is True for 2 December 2012
New: Honorary Unsubscribe Books
The early write-ups from This is True's popular Honorary Unsubscribe feature are now available for your Kindle (or Kindle software for your smartphone, tablet, or computer) as low-cost ebooks. See details on Volume 1 (covering 1998 through 2000), Volume 2 (covering 2001 through 2003), and Volume 3 (covering 2004 through 2006). The honorees truly are the people you wish you had known.
About the HUs
About This is TrueSubscribe Free
to This is True
Oldest: American scholar Seymour Lipset
Newest: “Sting-Ray” designer Al Fritz
Prev: TV editor Dann Cahn
Next: Astronomy educator Patrick Moore
Copyright 1998-2013 ThisIsTrue.Inc, all rights reserved. May not be copied or archived without express, prior, written permission. "This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisIsTrue.Inc, Ridgway Colorado.