John P. Merrill John P. Merrill John Putnam Merrill (March 10, 1917 – April 14, 1984) was an American physician and medical researcher. He led the team which performed the world's first successful kidney transplant. He generally credited as the "father of nephrology" or "the founder of nephrology," which is the scientific study of the kidney and its diseases. Merrill was born in 1917 in Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1938, he attended the Harvard Medical School. He graduated in 1942; and he was an intern at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. During World War II, he served for four
Transplantable organs and tissues a procedure carried out to replace both heart and lungs in a single operation. Due to a shortage of suitable donors, it is a rare procedure; only about a hundred such transplants are performed each year in the United States. The patient is anesthetised. When the donor organs arrive, they are checked for fitness; if any organs show signs of damage, they are discarded and the operation cancelled. In order to avoid removal of recipient organs when donor organs are not viable, it is standard procedure that the patient is not operated on until the donor organs arrive and are