ABSTRACT
During the ensuing 20 years (1953-1973), the conceptual framework of clinical renal transplantation that exists today was put in place in a succession of steps. The first of these steps (4) was largely dependent on kidney donation by live volunteers. In fact, it is unlikely that the modern era of kidney and other kinds of organ transplantation could have evolved as it did between 1953 and 1970 without the observations and advances made possible by the use of these early live donors. The reason was that organs from deceased donors during most of this time could be obtained only after cessation of heart beat and respiration. The clinical results using the ischemically compromised grafts were so poor and the clinical observations were so widely variable that deceased-donor organ transplantation had come to an impasse, both as treatment and as an instrument of discovery.
