Overview

By the mid-twentieth century surgeons began successfully transplanting human organs in order to save the lives of patients whose organs were failing from disease. These procedures were at first sensational, sparking debate among the medical community and the general public. In order for a transplantation to take place, a donor was required. With many organ transplantations, the donor was deceased at the time of donation. This startling development in medical history was, in fact, less sensational than the product of years of careful research. The field of human organ transplantation required many of the fields of medicine—surgery, histology, and immunology, for example—to unite in its cause. The research and performance of human organ transplants throughout the second half of the century resulted in more Nobel Prize awards than any other medical field in history. Within 50 years, kidney...