The Organ Transplant Revolution

French surgeon Alexis Carrel developed methods of suturing blood vessels, solving the fundamental technical problem of connecting a transplanted organ to a recipient's circulation. His technique, demonstrated in animal experiments and later organ grafts with Charles Guthrie, earned the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and made transplant surgery technically conceivable decades before immunology could make it survive.

Location: Lyon, France

At the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, surgeon Joseph Murray transplanted a kidney from Ronald Herrick to his identical twin brother Richard, who was dying of chronic kidney disease. Because the twins were genetically identical, no rejection occurred and the graft functioned, making it the first successful human organ transplant. Murray received the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Surgeon Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital performed the first human-to-human heart transplant, implanting the heart of a crash victim into Louis Washkansky, a 54-year-old grocer. Washkansky survived 18 days before dying of pneumonia, but the operation, broadcast worldwide, opened the era of heart transplantation and triggered heart-transplant programs across the world.

Location: Cape Town, South Africa

Harvard Medical School published its landmark report defining irreversible coma, or brain death, as a new criterion for death. That same year the U.S. Uniform Anatomical Gift Act gave individuals the legal right to donate organs after death. Together these changes allowed organs to be recovered from beating-heart donors, resolving a supply problem that had limited early transplant programs.

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The immunosuppressant drug ciclosporin, discovered in a soil fungus sample by Sandoz researcher Jean Borel in the early 1970s, received U.S. approval following clinical trials showing dramatically improved survival of transplanted kidneys, livers, and hearts. By selectively suppressing the immune response, ciclosporin transformed transplantation from an experimental procedure into routine therapy and drove the rapid growth of liver, heart, and lung programs in the 1980s.

The U.S. Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act, outlawing the sale of human organs and establishing the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to organize equitable allocation. The law reflected an emerging global ethical consensus that organs should be donated, not bought, a principle challenged in later decades by organ trafficking scandals and transplant tourism.

Location: Washington, D.C., USA

More than 150 medical organizations, scientists, and policymakers endorsed the Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism, condemning commercialism in organ donation and setting international standards for ethical transplantation. The declaration responded to a global black market in kidneys, in which poor sellers in developing countries supplied wealthy recipients, exposing the persistent gap between organ supply and demand.

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted a heart from a gene-edited pig into David Bennett, a 57-year-old patient ineligible for a human heart. Bennett survived two months, dying in March 2022. The procedure followed a 2021 experimental pig-kidney transplant and marked the frontier of xenotransplantation, pursued as a potential answer to the chronic shortage of human organs.

Location: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network recorded the one millionth organ transplant performed in the United States since records began in 1954, with kidneys the most common organ. Global analyses estimated that available transplants met only a fraction of worldwide need, sustaining continuing efforts in machine perfusion, xenotransplantation, and organ preservation to close the gap.

Location: United States