Transplant pioneers embrace, trace progress

Medical pioneers Dr. Joseph Murray (left, in photo by Susan Symonds Mainframe Photographics) and Dr. Thomas Starzl (right) clapped each other on the back in a warm display of affection before Starzl gave a lecture last night in Boston as part of a visiting professorship named in honor of Murray.

Each thanked the other for his contributions to organ and cell transplantation that began in 1954 when Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant at the former Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Nine years later, Starzl performed the first liver transplant.

“Joe Murray was the perfect leader because he possessed to an unusual degree skill, intelligence, genuine kindness and unfailing integrity,” Starzl, 81, said in a lecture that tracked progress since that milestone. He spoke to a few hundred people at a forum presented by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The program continued with grand rounds led by Starzl this morning.

Starzl, of the University of Pittsburgh, is revered for his groundbreaking work -- first for introducing drugs to prevent rejection in transplants and later for finding ways to minimize organ recipients’ need for the powerful medications. He also performed the world’s first liver transplant in 1963 at the University of Colorado.

"His life has been characterized by high achievement and extraordinary impact," Murray, 88, said about Starzl. “He's an innovator whose scientific vision has always been ahead of his time.”

Before either of them spoke, a young scientist approached them with his own thanks. Manu R. Varma, a 26-year-old research assistant in cardiology at the Brigham, asked Starzl to sign a copy of his memoir “The Puzzle People.”

When Varma was 18, he received a kidney transplant at Starzl’s hospital. He has followed Starzl’s work on giving anti-rejection drugs before transplant and in gradually smaller doses afterward as the patient’s immune system moves toward tolerance of the transplanted organ.

“It changes what I take every day and it changes the long-term outcome,” Varma said about Starzl's continuing work.

At a reception following the lecture, Murray called his life’s work “fun.”

“We were doing what we loved to do. We picked a problem and we went to work on it,” he said in an interview. “The main point is, we helped people.”