ABSTRACT
It was a conversation that I had hoped to have some day with transplant surgeon Thomas E. Starzl—one that would explore the three decades-long relationship that medical historian Judith P. Swazey and I have developed with him over the course of our collaborative first-hand research on organ transplantation. This unusual triad, formed by a surgeon, a sociologist, and a historian, is integrally connected to our mutual sense of the more-than-biomedical significance of organ transplantation. Based primarily on the intermittent field research visits that Judith and I have made to Thomas Starzl at the University of Colorado and the University of Pittsburgh medical centers—the chief settings where his lifetime of pioneering clinical, technical, and scientific contributions to the field of transplantation have taken place 1 —the dynamic center of the relationship has turned around the questions that we have raised in our interviews with Tom, and in our publications (that he has assiduously read) about the “courage to fail”/“spare parts” ardor with which this form of organ replacement has been pursued, its therapeutic justification, its accomplishments, and its unintended harmful side-effects (Fox and Swazey 1974, 1992). Rather than being alienated by these questions, or defensive about them, he has consistently welcomed the opportunity to candidly discuss them with us. His responsiveness went beyond the intellectual importance that he clearly attached to pondering the social and moral quandaries that the evolution and deployment of transplantation have posed. Despite his sense of mission 146about organ transplantation—or perhaps because of it—these were matters with which Tom appeared to be continually wrestling, in an acutely personal and often angst-ridden way. His at-once ebullient, thoughtful, and pained reflections, along with the opportunities that he afforded us to observe him in the midst of his daily professional round, and our close, between-the-lines reading of the connotations of his evocative medical writing, have given Judith and myself a view of Thomas Starzl that is more intricate, and also more compelling, than the unbridled picture of him conveyed to us by some members of the transplant community.
