Joseph Murray Quotes

Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict.

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?

One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments.

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations.

Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful.

Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.

It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.

My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.'

If you're going to worry about what people say, you're never going to make any progress.