John Hartwell Harrison was an American urologic surgeon, professor, and author. He performed the first human organ removal for transplant to another. This was a pivotal undertaking as a member of the medical team that accomplished the world’s first successful kidney transplant. The team conducted its landmark transplant between identical twins in 1954. Harrison was a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia. He was educated there and in Ohio prior to completing his medical training and taking up practice in Boston, Massachusetts; he specialized in urology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Harrison taught surgery at nearby Harvard University, where he also contributed as a textbook editor and produced urological monologues. He died at age 74 of bladder cancer.
Harrison, Joseph E. Murray, John P. Merrill, and others achieved the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins Ronald and Richard Herrick, on December 23, 1954, at Brigham Hospital. Harrison's primary role was to remove the kidney of the donor, Ronald. Murray received a 1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this and later work. According to Murray's Nobel lecture, the operation that Harrison performed on the donor represented the first time a patient was subjected to major surgery that was not for his own benefit. The decision to proceed was made after consultation with clergy and others who carefully scrutinized the ethical aspects. Murray indicated that an extraordinary burden was inherently imposed upon Harrison in the care of his otherwise healthy patient, whereas Murray, the surgeon for the transplant recipient, was operating on a critically ill patient, and neither he nor the nephrologist had the ability to cure the recipient. Murray in his lecture also related a decisive exchange between Harrison and the donor: "At the conclusion of our last pre-operative discussion, the donor asked whether the hospital would be willing to assume responsibility for his health care for the rest of his life if he agreed to donate his kidney. Dr. Harrison said, 'Of course not.' But he immediately, and sympathetically, followed with the question, 'Ronald, do you think anyone in this room would ever refuse to take care of you if you needed any medical help?' Ronald paused, and then understood that his future depended upon our sense of professional responsibility rather than on legal assurances. He consented on this basis and the transplant proceeded.” After the donor's surgery, Harrison assisted with the recipient's operation. Upon completion of the surgical procedures, the transplanted kidney immediately assumed normal function in the recipient; he survived for eight years and died in 1962, of complications from his original chronic nephritis. The donor died in December 2010 of unrelated causes.
Awards and associations
The transplant team received the 1961 Amory Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for their accomplishment. Harrison had been elected in 1954 as a Fellow of the Academy. Harrison's other awards were as follows:
