A Time for All Things

Born in 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Michael DeBakey is the eldest of six children of Lebanese immigrants. He enjoys conspicuous academic success as a youth and then medical school, displaying intelligence and originality. DeBakey comes under the tutelage of surgery professor Alton Ochsner. He also spends a year training in Europe. Debakey and Ochsner publish important research papers. In World War Two DeBakey is assigned to the Office of the Army Surgeon General, where he excels in administration, rising to the rank of Colonel. He serves beyond the war’s end, contributing to the foundation of postwar federal medical research and veterans’ care. In 1948 he becomes Chair of Surgery at Baylor University medical school in Houston. The department focuses clinical and research efforts on vascular diseases, and leads a revolution in the surgical approach to these problems. DeBakey’s own family suffers from his devotion to his work. In the 1960s DeBakey’s fame grows. His lab pursues an artificial heart. Colleague Denton Cooley implants the first artificial heart with a device taken from DeBakey’s lab, and a forty-year rift between these two giants ensues. DeBakey becomes President, then Chancellor of the Baylor medical school. After the death of his first wife, he remarries in the 1970s. His fame and influence are worldwide. DeBakey operates on the Shah of Iran, and is consulted on the heart surgery of Boris Yeltsin. He is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008, and dies shortly afterward at age 99, a universally-admired legend.