On This Day in History: December 23

The first successful kidney transplant

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There’s not a better match for an organ transplant than from your identical twin. And considering the history of kidney transplant attempts prior to 1954, it was a good thing for brothers Ronald and Richard Herrick that they shared the same DNA.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 23, 1954--

Doctors had been playing about with transplanting kidneys for half a century, with little success. In 1902 researchers in Vienna had success with animals, and in 1909 in France a doctor tried giving a rabbit kidney to a child suffering kidney failure, but the kid died two weeks later. In 1933 in Ukraine the first human-to-human transplant took place, but the surgeons didn’t realize that their blood groups weren’t compatible, and the recipient died two days later.

In 1950 a somewhat successful transplant was conducted on a woman in Illinois who had polycystic kidney disease, but anti-rejection drugs didn’t exist yet, and 10 months later her body rejected the donated kidney. However, that 10 months gave her remaining kidney time to recover and she lived for another decade. Another transplant attempt was made in 1952 in Paris, but the kidney failed after three weeks.

On December 23, 1954 success would finally be found with the Herrick brothers in Boston. Ronald, who I assume was a swell fucking guy, was the donor, and Richard the recipient. The brothers were only 23 years old and Richard was dying; without the transplant he would have had no chance. Because they were identical twins, no anti-rejection medication was needed. Richard lived for another eight years. The success of the operation ushered in a new era of organ transplantation. Today, close to 20,000 kidney transplants are performed in the United States each year. More than 80% of kidney recipients live at least another five years.

The lead surgeon for the Herrick transplant, Dr. Joseph Murray, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990.

And if you haven’t yet, please sign up to be an organ donor. You won’t need those things after you die, but someone here on Earth could definitely benefit from them. Think of it as a form of afterlife.

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