Joseph Murray Quotes

Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful. But it isn't a given, and even if it were, I don't think the end justifies the means. I am not against stem cells, I think it's great. Blanket objection is not very reasonable to me-any effort to control scientific advances is doomed to fail. You cannot stop the human mind from working.

To the patient, any operation is momentous.

I was performing skin grafts and became interested in why skin wouldn't graft permanently.

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments.

It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table.

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations.

Its the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patients renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.

I've never regretted a swim

I tell [medical students] that they are the luckiest persons on earth to be in medical school, and to forget all this worry about H.M.O.'s and keep your eye on helping the patient. It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a couple of years ago.

Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict.

One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

You cannot stop the human mind from working.

And I start off every morning dedicating it to our Creator.