Customer Reviews

The Puzzle People: Memoirs Of A Transplant Surgeon

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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.

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

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.

Tom Starzl is known best as the surgeon who performed more firsts than most and advanced the technology of organ transplanting farther than anyone. But what Starzl really is, more than a physician, is a scientist, a brilliant scientist who discovered intricacies of tissue rejection and immunosuppression that few of his surgical peers could even imagine.

Dr. Starzl saves lifes not only with his skills, but with a real heart. A genuine human being.

I loved this book as it was a tribute to the early and later doctors who
explored and finally achieved full heart transplants in people though they experimented on various animals first. It showed the perserverance that these MD's
exhibited and their selflessness at times.
It enlightened me a lot...rejection of the new organ was a huge stumbling block
in the whole process.
I was so moved, too, by Dr. Starzl's personal life!
There were technical parts and they were not fully understood by me,
but the overall book is a 10 for me!
It spurred me to search out other books on the same topic, and I found
books by Kathy Magiota as fullfilling.My favorite is a memouir entitled "Healing Hearts" It's a contrast to Dr. Starzl's book but excellent too!

Thomas E Starzl, MD, (b. 1926) has written an autobiographical masterpiece that eloquently details his unquenchable passion to push forward the science of organ transplantation.

In 339 pages he invites the reader to step beside him in the operating room as well as inside his head. The man is ruthlessly honest, about himself and others. Would you believe that before each operation the man whom the Starzl Center for Transplantation in Pittsburgh was named after was so terrified he could barely enter the operating room?

This son of a newspaperman, Starzl seeks the truth in prose as he did in the field of research. Nearly every academic paper written bears his name or citation on it.

In The Puzzle People we meet all the stellar figures in the new transplant era which began with the first kidney transplant in 1962. Starzl is generous in his praise and admiration of other surgeons, even though it is Starzl himself who has been called the father of transplantation. He would be the first to agree, I assume from this book, that it is always a team effort. He is not the narcissist many surgeons are said to be. In fact, Starzl lauds their narcissism as a means of protecting themselves. They need immeasurable courage, he says, as they enter the sanctity of the body interior, either to heal the patient or to destroy him.

Liver transplantation has always been his passion. But countless failures dogged him in the beginning, devastating this man who, as a youngster, wanted to become a priest. When his beloved mother, a nurse, died of cancer, shattering the happy family home life in LeMars, Iowa, Starzl decided to enter medical school.

The golden age of transplantation would take our nation by storm. Starzl doesn't shy away from discussing the moral and ethical concerns of live-donor transplants or supporting the tremendous economic costs in saving one individual human being who would otherwise die.

He is honest about losing his wife Barbara to his Mistress Surgery and of later meeting a black woman named Joy who would become the great love - and wife - of his later years.

Above all, he cares deeply for his patients, and writes about them with deep compassion. When I emailed him recently about my own scheduled kidney transplant, this 85-year-old retired surgeon gave me a thoughtful reply, complete with two reprints of articles that would be helpful in my hopes to eventually reduce my antirejection medicine, which he describes in this book.

Without this medication, of course, there is no hope of a live-donor transplant unless you are a twin. When Starzl was at the University of Colorado and later at the University of Pittsburgh, he was instrumental in introducing effective new antirejection medicine which made liver transplants possible.

To say that I and millions of other patients with end-stage organ failure owe our lives to this man is quite obvious. What is stunning, though, is the knowledge gained through this book, which reads like a great suspense novel, that the attending surgeons - and usually there are about four at any given operation - are highly trained and meticulous in their attention to every patient.

Of this I am certain: no sponges will be left in my belly. Only the healthy left kidney of my brave donor daughter.

The author disparages several people in this book, including those who are not alive to defend themselves. This reflects more negatively on the author than on the persons he criticizes. Nonetheless, the book is compelling at times, particularly where the author talks about the patients he has helped, or those he has tried to help but who did not survive. The author was and is clearly a major figure in a field which has done much to prolong and improve the lives of many people. If the book accomplishes nothing else, hopefully it will encourage its readers to provide for the donation of their organs after death, or those of their loved ones.

This has to be one of the most poorly written books I've ever read. There were frequent references to trivial incidents in the author's life (e.g. a surprise 50th birthday party), but there was no overarching sense of the major accomplishments and setbacks in transplant science during the author's illustrious career. By the end of the book, I was left with no sense of the next medical frontiers in transplantation, or the ethical dilemmas they would engender. Starzl would have done far better to coauthor with a journalist, the better to highlight crucial issues and establish context.

Attacks on old professional enemies and odd turns of phrase about people's ethnic backgrounds were also off-putting. Knowing that Starzl can hold a grudge for decades made me take his chracterizations of even his friends with a few kilograms of salt.

Starzl may have been a brilliant surgeon, but this book reads more like a personal indulgence meant for a vanity press. A pity that this book isn't the gripping behind-the-scenes tour of the politics and techniques of transplant it was meant to be.