AP Features, November 27th, 2007
Famed heart surgeon Michael DeBakey's immigrant parents taught their children to treasure two things: their education and their American citizenship.
DeBakey's academic devotion led him to pioneer now-common procedures such as bypass surgery and invent a host of devices to help heart patients. Now the country DeBakey loves so dearly is awarding him its top civilian honor.
On Tuesday, the 99-year-old was presented with the bill that President Bush signed to authorize his Congressional Gold Medal.
"It's just a great country, and we are very, very fortunate to be members of this country," DeBakey, the son of Lebanese parents, said at a ceremony at the Baylor College of Medicine. "I'm so grateful to have this award for that reason."
Congress voted last month to award the medal to DeBakey, considered the father of modern cardiovascular surgery.
He performed his first successful coronary bypass in 1964. Two years later, he successfully used a partial artificial heart to solve the problems of patients who could not be weaned from a heart-lung machine following open-heart surgery.
DeBakey volunteered for military service during World War II and was instrumental in developing mobile army surgical hospitals, or MASH units. He also played a role in developing the current VA medical system.
DeBakey's falling out with fellow heart surgeon Denton Cooley in the 1960s led to one of medicine's best-known rivalries. The two men made amends last month, when Cooley presented DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award at a meeting of Cooley's Cardiovascular Surgery Society.
After Cooley performed the first artificial heart implant in 1969, DeBakey said the other surgeon had inappropriately used a heart that DeBakey had been working to develop in the Baylor College of Medicine labs.
Cooley said he and a third doctor, who also designed artificial hearts in DeBakey's lab, had built the heart privately and that he had to use it because the patient's life was in jeopardy.
The American College of Surgeons censured Cooley, who subsequently resigned from Baylor.
The former collaborators avoided each other and barely spoke for decades, though tensions thawed over time. The two shook hands in 2004 during official hospital business.
Cooley, 87, told the Houston Chronicle that the doctors hadn't really exchanged words in 50 years before the October lifetime achievement ceremony.
The Congressional Gold Medal has been awarded to some 300 individuals since the first was given to George Washington in 1776. Among recent recipients have been the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Tuskegee airmen, Jackie Robinson, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Pope John Paul II.
The U.S. Mint plans to work with DeBakey and his family on the design of the medal, which he will officially receive later in Washington.
