Notes From a Transplant Surgeon #559
April 26, 2020
One of the most amazing things modern medicine does is organ transplants: literally taking organs like the lungs or the heart from recently dead people and using them to replace the failing organs in living, critically ill people, giving them a second shot at living a fuller life. How and when did we first figure out how to do this? What does a modern transplant look like? And what is it like to be the doctor who takes from death to give life? This week host Rachelle Saunders talks with Dr Joshua Mezrich, Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Multi-Organ Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin and author of the new book "When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon", about the history of transplant surgery and his own history as a transplant surgeon and its ups and downs.
Guests:
- Joshua Mezrich
Featured Book
When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon
Guest Bios
Joshua Mezrich
Joshua Mezrich is a graduate of Princeton University where he majored in Russian Language and Literature. He then attended Cornell University Medical College, and after completion was a general surgery resident at the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics. He performed a three year research fellowship at the Transplantation Biology Research Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and then conducted a transplant surgery fellowship at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He is an associate professor of surgery in the division of multi-organ transplantation at the University of Wisconsin, where he also runs a basic science lab studying the immune system. His first book, “When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon was released on January 15, 2019, published by Harper Collins.
