Guide to the Dr. Thomas E. Starzl M.D. Papers, 1908-2017, UA.90.F68

Arrangement

Repository
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Title
Dr. Thomas E. Starzl M.D. Papers
Creator
Starzl, Thomas E. (Thomas Earl)
Collection Number
UA.90.F68
Extent
540 Linear Feet (443 boxes)
Date
1908-2017
Date
1960-2016
Abstract
The Dr. Thomas E. Starzl M.D. Papers document the life and career of one of the 20th century's most influential medical professionals. Dr. Starzl has been called the "Father of Modern Transplantation," and is credited with developing and performing the first successful human liver transplant in 1967. His groundbreaking work has not been restricted to only surgery; he has contributed enormously to the field of biology and immunology, and is one of the scientific field's most prolific authors. The collection contains a wide variety of material, including correspondence, articles, presentations, awards, and photographs.
Language
English .
Author
Ashley Taylor.
Publisher
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Address
University of Pittsburgh Library System
Archives & Special Collections
Website: library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Business Number: 412-648-3232 (Thomas) | 412-648-8190 (Hillman)
Contact Us: www.library.pitt.edu/ask-archivist
URL: http://library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections

Acquisition Information

Gift of Dr. Thomas E. Starzl in May 2001; additional material donated in April 2011.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into 15 series.

Series I. Articles and Chapters

Series II. Books

Series III. Citations

Series IV. Presentations and Speeches

Series V. Abstracts

Series VI. Reviews

Series VII. Correspondence

Series VIII. Administrative

Series IX. Grants

Series X. Institutional Review Board

Series XI. Personal

Series XII. Awards and Honors

Series XIII. Audio-Visual

Series XIV. Public Relations

Series XV. Research Files

Scope and Content Notes

The Dr. Thomas E. Starzl M.D. Papers document the life and career of one of the 20th century's most influential medical professionals. The collection contains a wide variety of material, including correspondence, articles, book drafts, citations statistics, presentations, abstracts, reviews, awards, schedules, travel information, scrapbooks, DVDs, figures, and photographs. The vast majority of the collection focuses on Dr. Starzl's professional career, though there is some personal information. Most of the material dates from after Dr. Starzl's move to Pittsburgh in 1980, though some older material dates from his career in Denver, Colorado.

Access Restrictions

Access to files in Series VII. Correspondence requires a signed Confidentiality Agreement due to the presence of incidental health care information.

A portion of the material in this collection contains sensitive medical information. In order to access the files, a researcher must submit a Request for Access to Restricted Material in Collections with Sensitive Medical Information. This material includes Box 338 in Series X. Institutional Review Board and the entirety of Series XV. Research Files. Please contact Archives & Special Collections to receive the form.

Preferred Citation

Dr. Thomas E. Starzl M.D. Papers, 1908-2017, UA.90.F68, University Archives, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Ashley Taylor from 2011 to 2018.

Biography

Thomas Earl Starzl was born on March 11, 1926, in the town of LeMars, Iowa. He graduated from Westminster College in Missouri in 1947 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. He received his M.A. in anatomy in 1950, along with an M.D. and a Ph.D in neurophyisiology in 1952, all from Northwestern University in Chicago.

Dr. Starzl worked as a surgical intern at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore from 1952 to 1956. He was married to Barbara June Brothers in 1954; they would have three children, and would divorce in 1977. He left Johns Hopkins in 1956 and moved to the University of Miami, where he began his research on the liver. Dr. Starzl relocated back to Chicago to become a surgeon at Northwestern in 1958, where he continued his experiments with the liver, funded by a grant from the National Institute of Health. He was further supported by becoming a recipient of the prestigious Markle Scholarship in 1959, which convinced Dr. Starzl to stay in the world of university medicine. He was given freedom to continue his research on the possibility of liver transplantation in dogs.

In 1961, Dr. Starzl moved west to the University of Colorado in Denver, serving as Chief of Surgery at the Denver VA Hospital, where he was supported in his objective to make liver transplants in humans a medical reality. His transfer coincided with a development in immunosuppression medications that made transplanted organs less likely to be rejected by the recipient's body. Dr. Starzl began performing kidney transplants, successfully pioneering the use of drug and radiation cocktails to treat patients in 1962.

Dr. Starzl's first attempt at a human liver transplant occurred in 1963. After several failed attempts and a temporary moratorium on attempting the procedure, Dr. Starzl confirmed that the biggest obstacle was still inadequate antirejection therapy. With the development of ALG, a new antirejection drug, Dr. Starzl perfected a drug cocktail that nearly eliminated organ rejection. He performed seven successful liver transplants on children in 1967.

Dr. Starzl was continually frustrated that, despite his success in the operating room and with the antirejection drugs, liver transplant patients lived no longer than two and a half years. He spent much of the 1970s seeking more effective ways of treating rejection. Dr. Starzl found an answer to his problems in the new drug cyclosporine, which prevented both rejection and infection. Dr. Starzl advocated for the new drug to be tested in Denver in 1979, but the risk of kidney failure as a side effect of cyclosporine caused the University of Colorado to balk and cease the trials.

Sensing he had reached an impasse at Colorado, and convinced that cyclosporine would be the answer to the issues surrounding infection and rejection in transplant patients, Dr. Starzl was recruited by Henry T. Bahson, a former colleague at Johns Hopkins and then the Chairman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, to start a new transplantation center in Pittsburgh. Dr. Starzl relocated to the University of Pittsburgh in 1981, where he continued his trials of cyclosporine, establishing its utility in 1982, which led to its commercial use beginning in 1983. Dr. Starzl took his position in the field of organ transplantation seriously, and was a fervid advocate for the betterment of the field. He campaigned in Washington, D.C., advocated for organ donation indications on drivers licenses, and was consulted to help devise the first national system of organ procurement, which was manifested in the United Network for Organ Sharing program that was implemented in 1987, based on the model at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Starzl continued to actively perform surgeries until 1991, after undergoing a coronary artery bypass. He was involved in or performed over 10,000 transplant surgeries in his prolific career.

In addition to his advocacy efforts and surgical legacy, Dr. Starzl has contributed enormously to medical literature. In 1999, Dr. Starzl was identified by the Institute for Scientific Information as the most cited scientist in the field of clinical medicine. He has written four books and well over 2,000 scientific articles. After retiring from active surgery, Dr. Starzl continued his research at the University of Pittsburgh. He pushed for the first use of FK506, later renamed tacrolimus, in 1991; this new antirejection drug was even more effective than cyclosporine at preventing both organ rejection and infection. He also extensively studied the process of weaning transplant recipients off the use of immunosuppresant drugs, the relationship between donor and recipient cells post-transplant, and the process of microchimerism, which may redefine the way the medical community looks at immunology.

Dr. Starzl was remarried in 1981 to Joy Conger, who had been a research assistant at the University of Colorado. In 1996, the University of Pittsburgh Transplantation Institute, of which he was the Director since 1991, was renamed the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute in honor of his service, dedication, and achievements. Dr. Starzl was the recipient of more than 200 honors and awards, including the National Medal of Science, The Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the David M. Hume Memorial Award, the King Faisal International Prize for Medicine, the Brookdale Award in Medicine, the Distinguished Service Award from the American Liver Foundation, and the Peter Medawar Prize.

A more detailed biography of Dr. Starzl can be found on his website.

Subjects

    Corporate Names

    • American Society of Transplant Surgeons
    • Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh
    • Presbyterian Hospital (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
    • University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (2003- )
    • UPMC Presbyterian Hospital

    Personal Names

    • Starzl, Thomas E. (Thomas Earl)
    • Bahnson, Henry T.

    Genres

    • Speeches
    • Correspondence
    • Motion pictures
    • Photographs

    Other Subjects

    • Medical ethics
    • Surgeons -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- History -- 20th century
    • Medical education -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Academic medical centers -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Authors, American -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Transplant surgeons -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • University of Pittsburgh
    • Personal papers
    • Transplantation immunology -- Research -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Immunosuppressive agents – Testing -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Immunopharmacology -- Research -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Immunosuppression -- Research -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Xenografts -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Health and medicine

Container List

Series XV. Research Files, 1962-2010

Extent

33 boxes

Scope and Content Notes

The Research Files series contains information related to medical research that Dr. Starzl was involved with. This includes data on transplant donors and recipients, study information, and conference data. This series contains materials from 1962 to 2010. Because the material in this series contains personally identifiable information, particularly with regards to medical data, access is therefore restricted to protect the privacy of the individuals involved and their families.

Access Restrictions

Material in this series contains Level 2 research and sensitive medical information as defined in the A&SC Policy on Access to Restricted Materials in Collections with Medical Information. Researchers will be required to complete an A&SC Request for Access to Restricted Material in Collections with Sensitive Medical Information in order to access these records. Please contact A&SC staff for more information.