A Brother's Gift on the Operating Table

On December 23, 1954, twenty-three-year-old Ronald Herrick lay on an operating table at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, perfectly healthy, waiting to be cut open. In the adjacent operating room, his identical twin brother Richard was dying. Chronic nephritis had ravaged both of Richard's kidneys, and without intervention, he had weeks to live.

Dr. Joseph E. Murray and his surgical team had never attempted anything like this. Every previous organ transplant in history had failed. The body always rejected foreign tissue. But identical twins shared the same genetic blueprint, and Murray believed Ronald's kidney might survive inside his brother. The risk to Ronald was real — surrendering an organ he might one day need, undergoing major surgery with no medical benefit to himself.

Ronald never hesitated.

Dr. J. Hartwell Harrison removed Ronald's healthy kidney, and Murray carefully connected it inside Richard's body. When the clamps were released and blood flowed into the transplanted organ, the surgical team watched in silence. Then the kidney flushed pink and began producing urine on the table. Richard would live.