All great scientists question what seems to be the impossible. Dr. Thomas E. Starzl is no exception. As a young surgeon, he asked … what if? What if we could transplant the organ of one person into another to save a life? Could the impossible be transformed into reality?
Known to many as the father of transplantation, Dr. Starzl began his groundbreaking work nearly 40 years ago at the University of Colorado where he led a team of dedicated surgeons who performed the world’s first successful liver transplant – one of the most complex procedures in medicine.
In 1981, Dr. Starzl arrived in Pittsburgh where he performed the first of 30 liver transplants that year at the University of Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh became the transplant capital of the world, a place where the world’s finest surgeons came to train, asking every day, “Why not the impossible?”
And Pittsburgh witnessed and celebrated medical firsts … the first multiple organ transplant in 1983 … the first heart and liver transplant in 1984 … the first liver and intestine transplant in 1990.
Dr. Starzl became one of city’s heroes, joining the likes of Arnold Palmer, Mister Rogers, and Jonas Salk. Patients from around the world flocked to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center seeking the excellence and expertise of Dr. Starzl and the team of doctors he had gathered.
You might not expect this sort of career from a boy who grew up in the small town of Le Mars, Iowa. But Tom Starzl was the son of a newspaper editor and a surgical nurse, and he was born curious. That curiosity led him to enroll in Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where he earned his bachelor's degree in biology. Then to the Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, where in 1950 he received a master's degree in anatomy and both a doctoral degree in neurophysiology and a medical degree in 1952. He graduated with distinction. Later, came postgraduate work and a research fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and residencies at Johns Hopkins, the University of Miami, and the Veterans Administration Research Hospital in Chicago.
Along the way he earned a Markle Scholar in Medical Science, a distinguished honor bestowed annually to a small group of exceptionally promising young physicians in academic medicine. In 1962, Dr. Starzl joined the University of Colorado School of Medicine as an associate professor in surgery and 10 years later he was named chairman of the department.
In the early days, the medical world was pessimistic about the idea of successfully transplanting organs, but in 1963 Dr. Starzl changed that when he successfully combined immunosuppressant drugs following kidney transplants. Soon kidney transplants were being performed with greater success at hospitals all around the country.
The lessons learned from kidney transplantation and discoveries made by Starzl’s team in liver physiology led him to the world’s first successful liver transplantation in 1967.
Since then, tens of thousands of patients have benefited from this medical miracle, and according to the United Network of Organ Sharing, surgeons have performed more than 74,000 liver transplants in the United States since 1986.
Today, as director emeritus of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Dr. Starzl and his research and clinical colleagues continue, with relentless pursuit, to ask … what if?
What if we can find permanent solution to the challenges of transplantation … the chronic shortage of organs … the riddles of the immune system … the problems associated with rejection … safer immunosuppression … better organ preservation?
The impossible has never been an option for the determined organ transplant pioneer from Le Mars, Iowa, Dr. Thomas E. Starzl.
In recognition of his groundbreaking work, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center are proud to honor Dr. Thomas E. Starzl as a recipient of the 2004 National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor, for his innovation in transplantation medicine.