The Puzzle People - (Regional) by Thomas Starzl (Paperback)

About the Book

A pioneer in human organ transplantation eloquently recounts the history of this miraculous field, its major players, and the legal and ethical issues that surround it. Features a new Epilogue that brings readers up-to-date on developments in transplantation.

Book Synopsis

Given the tensions and demands of medicine, highly successful physicians and surgeons rarely achieve equal success as prose writers. It is truly extraordinary that a major, international pioneer in the controversial field of transplant surgery should have written a spellbinding, and heart-wrenching, autobiography.
Thomas Starzl grew up in LeMars, Iowa, the son of a newspaper publisher and a nurse. His father also wrote science fiction and was acquainted with the writer Ray Bradbury. Starzl left the family business to enter Northwestern University Medical School where he earned both and M.D. and a PhD. While he was a student, and later during his surgical internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he began the series of animal experiments that led eventually to the worldu2019s first transplantation of the human liver in 1963.
Throughout his career, first at the University of Colorado and then at the University of Pittsburgh, he has aroused both worldwide admiration and controversy. His technical innovations and medical genius have revolutionized the field, but Starzl has not hesitated to address the moral and ethical issues raised by transplantation. In this book he clearly states his position on many hotly debated issues including brain death, randomized trials for experimental drugs, the costs of transplant operations, and the system for selecting organ recipients from among scores of desperately ill patients.
There are many heroes in the story of transplantation, and many u201cpuzzle people, u201d the patients who, as one journalist suggested, might one day be made entirely of various transplanted parts. They are old and young, obscure and world famous. Some have been taken into the hearts of America, like Stormie Jones, the brave and beautiful child from Texas. Every patient who receives someone elseu2019s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle. u201cIt was not just the acquisition of a new part, u201d he writes. u201cThe rest of the body had to change in many ways before the gift could be accepted. It was necessary for the mind to see the world in a different way.u201d The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people. u201cSome were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.u201d

Review Quotes

Powerful, poignant, deft, this memoir in itself serves as a masterful argument for organ transplantation as Starzl, a retired pioneer in the field, recreates the intricate history, the stunning breakthroughs and the tragic failures of the controversial surgery.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Dr. Starzl makes some surprisingly candid disclosures. . . . [He has] a flair for clear, vivid writing. . . . His autobiography, full of insights into the stops, starts and blind avenues of medical research, is a reminder that first attempts rarely succeed in human experimentation.-- "New York Times"

Engaging. . . . Describing his progression from perpetual graduate student, to young M.D. with 'an intense fear of failing the patients, ' to a respected, sometimes controversial specialist. . . . Unforgettable.-- "Los Angeles Times"

Plain-speaking and passionate, The Puzzle People is something out of the ordinary in medical autobiography.-- "The Lancet"

Starzl tells a fascinating story, not only in giving his distinctly personal view of the evolution of organ transplantation, but also about himself. His book is recommended for anyone with curiosity about transplantation, or with broad interests in current medical events and the remarkable successes in clinical and biological sciences during the latter half of the 20th century.-- "New England Journal of Medicine"

Starzl's 'puzzle people' are not only the patients whose acquisitions of new organs have profoundly altered both their bodies and their minds, but also the physicians whose lives have been changed by participating in the process. . . . A well-crafted glimpse into a world of science where politics and personalities often clash.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

This hard-to-put-down book is more interesting than a thriller. . . . Not only a portrait of an interesting person and his social and family interactions and a look into the transplantation field, but also an excellent overview of health care.-- "JAMA"

Will serve future generations as an authoritative and highly readable account of the first four decades of transplantation.-- "Journal of the History of Medicine"

About the Author

Thomas E. Starzl is Distinguished Service Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Among his numerous international awards and honors, Starzl is the recipient of the 2012 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his pioneering work in the field of liver transplantation. He has presided over both the International Transplant Society and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons. In 1987 Starzl founded the Transplant Recipients International Organization, and is donating the royalties from the sale of The Puzzle People to this and other charities.