The transplanting of organs and tissues -- hearts, kidneys, lungs, bone marrow -- has become such an accepted part of medical practice that it is hard to remember when the technique was considered highly dubious. But as recently as the early 1950s, many doctors thought transplants would never be possible.
Thanks to breakthroughs by a few researchers, the doubts have long since vanished. Last week the Nobel committee recognized two of those early pioneers. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine will go to Joseph Murray of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, who performed the first successful transplant of a human...
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