When plastic surgeon Joseph E. Murray was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 (an honor he shared with physician E. Donnal Thomas), his citation read: “He has given the gift of life to hundreds of thousands of people destined to die young." Murray, who died in 2012, had set out to accomplish what had once been thought impossible, even unethical by the medical community — organ transplantation.
That success, however, did not come easily. Because the human immune system is designed to reject foreign bodies, transplanting organs between people was long deemed impossible. But Murray's successful transplantation of a kidney between two identical twins in 1954 would pave the way for other transplants to follow. And in the decades since, the field of organ donation has grown by leaps and bounds, tackling logistical and ethical challenges along the way.
