By Mary Slosson
Nov 26 (Reuters) – Dr. Joseph Murray, the surgeon who
carried out the first successful kidney transplant and later won
a Nobel Prize for his work in medicine and physiology, died on
Monday in Boston at the age of 93.
Murray died after suffering a stroke last Thursday, Brigham
and Women’s Hospital spokesman Tom Langford said.
Murray and his team completed the first human organ
transplant in 1954, taking a kidney from one identical twin and
giving it to his twin brother, opening a new field in medicine,
the hospital said.
“The world is a better place because of all Dr. Murray has
given. His legacy will forever endure in our hearts and in every
patient who has received the gift of life through
transplantation,” hospital president Dr. Elizabeth Nabel said in
a statement.
Later in his career, Murray continued to search for ways of
suppressing a patient’s immune response to prevent it from
rejecting foreign tissue, eventually becoming a co-winner of the
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1990.
“Difficulties are opportunities. This is a quote that sits
atop my father’s desk at home. It reflects the unwavering
optimism of a great man who was generous, curious, and always
humble,” his son Rick said in a statement.
Murray began a career in medicine on graduating from Harvard
Medical School in the 1940s, and developed an interest in
transplanting tissue while working with service personnel
injured in World War Two, according to the Britannica Online
Encyclopedia.
He completed his surgical training at the Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and later returned to join the staff and serve
as chief of plastic surgery.
With broad interests beyond medicine, Murray said in a brief
autobiography for the Nobel Prize organization that he and his
extended family had been “blessed in our lives beyond my wildest
dreams.”
“My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this
planet. If that were possible, I’d spend one lifetime each in
embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology,” he said.
“The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman,
tennis player, or writer for the National Geographic.”
More than 600,000 people worldwide have received transplants
since Murray’s innovation, the hospital said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
