The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon [Hardcover]

Thomas Starzl (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 082293714X | ISBN-13: 978-0822937142 | Publication Date: July 21, 1992 | Edition: 1

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 world’s 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 “puzzle people,” 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 else’s organ - and Starzl remembers each one - is a puzzle.  “It was not just the acquisition of a new part,” he writes.  “The 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.”  The surgeons and physicians who pioneered transplantation were also changed: they too became puzzle people.  “Some were corroded or destroyed by the experience, some were sublimated, and none remained the same.”

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Powerful, poignant, deft, this memoir in itself serves as a masterful argument for organ transplantation as Starzl, a retired pioneer in the field, re-creates the intricate history, the stunning breakthroughs and the tragic failures of the controversial surgery. Born in Iowa in 1926 to a nurse mother and a journalist-science fiction novelist father, Starzl as a young doctor showed himself to be tenacious in perfecting kidney and liver transplants, while overcoming medical infighting and resistant medical and government bureaucracies. Moving from the University of Colorado to the University of Pittsburgh--he established renal transplantation centers at both--he takes us through the advances, from the technique requiring related kidney donors to cadaveric kidney and liver implants to the development of drugs to aid in managing rejection and infection, to programs for finding donors and transporting their organs. Starzl pays tribute to colleagues who either paved the way or helped set the course, while firmly judging those he views as impeders. If he does not lay to rest the philosophical and financial issues surrounding organ transplantation, he succeeds in making us reconsider reservations, reminding us that "All triumphs in medicine are the forgotten sorrows of past days." Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Distinguished surgeon Starzl here spends relatively little time on his patients or even in the operating theater. Instead, he focuses on research funding, the politics of hospitals and medical schools, and the great number of people and scientific advances necessary for achieving successful organ transplants. He also discusses the ethics (and dilemmas) of defining brain death, of human experimentation and randomized clinical trials, and of obtaining donor organs. Though he uses his autobiography to settle a few old scores, Starzl is a good writer, skilled at explaining medical complexities in lay language without oversimplifying. He also gives credit to his nonphysician technicians and other medical colleagues. With the current debates on healthcare costs, "rationing," and perceived scientific irregularities likely to continue, this topical book is recommended for collections with strong medical or scientific/technological interests.
- Mary Chitty, Biotrends Research, Natick, Mass.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (July 21, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082293714X
• ISBN-13: 978-0822937142
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting personal account of recent surgical history, March 10, 2001

By 

Alon Kahana (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon (Hardcover)

This book, by transplantation pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl, is an easy read, a wonderfully inspiring story, and an interesting history of modern surgical medicine. I was compelled to write the review because of several reviews that disparage Dr. Starzl and this book.

The book is an inspirational story of a young mid-westerner, with no connections or wealth to help him in his journey, who innovated, struggled, competed, succeeded, and eventually became THE transplant surgeon in the world. The reason Pittsburgh is a transplant mecca is that Dr. Starzl is there.

Now, certainly Dr. Starzl's personality has a reputation that casts him in a negative light - I don't know the man, but I suspect that great succeess also breeds great resentments. Whatever his failings are, his contributions are beyond dispute.

Dr. Starzl's ability as a surgeon has also been questioned. Again, I have never operated with him, but the success of his transplant program speaks for itself. Also, if his only contribution was to innovate and educate a generation of transplant surgeons, then that by itself would be a fine legacy.

Finally, some reviews bash the book, so here goes my actual book review:

The book is an extremely personal account, with all the beauty and failings that are an inherent part of such a personal endeavor. Yes, he settles old scores. Yes, he portrays himself as the greatest man on earth. Yes he does not dwell on important social and ethical issues that confront modern surgery. However, these "problems" with the book are also what makes this book such a wonderful read - it is really like a conversation with a great man. He lets you in on his most secret fears (he hates operating), his most painful memories (his father's health and death, his failed family life, his second wife's history of physical abuse), his greatest triumphs (successful liver transplantations), his greatest failures (failed surgeries, inability to get along with colleagues and superiors in academia, his family/children). This is such a personal account that any other perspective on it completely misses the point. Dr. Starzl pours his heart out, which is what makes this book so interesting.

I've recently read the autobiography of Francis Moore, the great chair of Surgery at Harvard. It is such a boring book ! It offers nothing personal, nothing intimate, just a dry listing of accomplishments and people who were involved in them. One learns more about Dr. Moore from Dr. Starzl's book than from his own autobiography.

In conclusion, this is a very captivating account of a personal journey. For all his failings, Dr. Starzl is not afraid to reveal himself, and the result is a compelling and inspirational book that most readers will thoroughly enjoy.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am a transplant recipient and need this book, May 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon (Hardcover)

Dr Starzl wrote an excellent book of the history of organ transplantation. Without his work in the late 50's many more people would have died. To me he is the real hero. Anyone who can give it a bad review does not live it everyday like my wife and I do. I wish I found it sooner. many thanks Dr. Starzl

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent treatise of the life of a hero, October 3, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Remsen, IA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon (Hardcover)

Dr. Starzl's unassuming book is a must read for anyone who has ever checked "organ donor" on their driver's license, or those who have thought of it, or dreaded it, or for anyone who knows or knew a transplant recipient or donor. One wonders how Dr. Starzl had time to right this, as he worked tirelessly to battle kidney and liver disease. It is fantastically written, I couldn't wait to begin the next adventure that was surely around the corner. Dr. Starzl lived a novel every day, and proved in his treatise that there did not exist any "little things" as he writes of the personalities of doctors, patients, and family. A fascinating reading that you will never forget, especially when it comes time to decide whether to donate a precious part of yourself after death.