Joseph Murray
Joseph Murray
Joseph Edward Murraywas an American plastic surgeon who performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins Richard and Ronald Herrick on December 23, 1954...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth1 April 1919
CountryUnited States of America
astronomy lifetime lifetimes lives spend writer
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. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.'
advances blanket doomed objection reasonable scientific
Blanket objection is not very reasonable to me - any effort to control scientific advances is doomed to fail.
across flight seem
Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.
extremely
Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful.
giants rooms realizing
One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.
growing-up believe catholic
Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict.
rejection skins host
The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?
doctors childhood quality
I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments.
saving kidneys patient
Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patients renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.
failure mean science
Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful. But it isn't a given, and even if it were, I don't think the end justifies the means. I am not against stem cells, I think it's great. Blanket objection is not very reasonable to me-any effort to control scientific advances is doomed to fail. You cannot stop the human mind from working.
mind human-mind humans
You cannot stop the human mind from working.
couple school eye
I tell [medical students] that they are the luckiest persons on earth to be in medical school, and to forget all this worry about H.M.O.'s and keep your eye on helping the patient. It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a couple of years ago.
patient operations
To the patient, any operation is momentous.
eye order perfection
It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table.