IS RAVDIN LECTURE IN THE BASIC SCIENCES The Mystique of Organ Transplantation

The ability to replace faulty body parts with transplanted cells, tissues, and organs has forever altered the principles guiding the practice of medicine. I will first describe how basic science played an essential role in this revolution. But my second objective will be to show how surgeons successfully violated the preexisting rules of immunology and biology, thereby endowing transplantation with an enduring element of mystery. In the long run, surgeons who created the mystique also removed it, but not until a third of a century later.