Picture of Health
A Real Lifesaver
Massachusetts General Hospital
Since his first transplant 50 years ago, Dr. Paul Russell ’43 has witnessed a revolution.
Dr. Paul Russell ’43
E
ach year, a man who lives on Boston’s South Shore stops by to visit Dr. Paul Russell ’43. The man is in his 70s now, but he was only in his 20s when Paul saved his life. A pioneer in transplant surgery, Paul performed Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) first kidney transplant in the early 1960s; the South Shore resident was one of his first patients. “He’s still living on his brother’s kidney,” Paul says, noting that the patient has now outlived his kidney donor. Carrying his brother with him every day has a powerful effect, not only physically, but spiritually. “He’s very aware of that,” Paul says. The former patient’s yearly visit acts as both a thank you and a reminder of those early days of transplantation, when Paul was on the cutting edge of immunosuppression, gradually coming to understand how best to keep a patient from rejecting another person’s organ. Over the years, Paul transplanted kidneys, livers, pancreata, and bone marrow. He formally founded the hospital’s transplantation unit in 1969 and ran a research lab; he still visits his lab regularly and advises the next generations of physicians, who are as determined to innovate and improve transplantation as he was. At one time, Paul spent considerable time applying for grants from the National Institutes of Health to support his transplant research. Of his long, impressive career, Paul is most proud of his research into immunosuppression and the advances that it allows. Even today, the topic clearly enthralls him: he launches into a discussion of why certain cells are accepted better than others, ways to prevent acute rejection reactions, and how monoclonal antibodies, a relatively new weapon in the immunosuppressive arsenal, can be targeted at certain cells to help transplants succeed. At 87, Paul remains involved in patient care, making rounds on weekday mornings with a team that typically includes a nephrologist, hepatologist, infectious disease specialist, and several surgical residents. They visit patients and analyze their treatment. “We discuss it together,” Paul says. “I tell them—c’mon, teach me about this.” No doubt, they often tell him the same. After all, Paul joined MGH in 1948 at age 23. He has been a professor at Harvard Medical School since 1962 and still serves there as the John Homans Distinguished Professor of Surgery; Harvard honored him by creating the Paul S. Russell/Warner Professor of Surgery Professorship. Paul marvels at the changes he’s witnessed over his career—in every medical arena, but particularly in diagnosis, thanks to enormous advances in imaging techniques. “When I look back, it’s staggering even to me to see what medicine can do and how far it’s come,” he says. Quarterly Winter 2012
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