Biography explores life of cardiovascular pioneer DeBakey
Surgeon uses professional knowledge in writing about icon of Texas
It takes a surgeon to understand one. Dr. Craig A. Miller, a vascular surgeon at Riverside Methodist Hospital/Ohio Health in Columbus, used his professional knowledge in writing the first biography of Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey, a man he knew only by reputation. He had no idea of the stumbling blocks and difficulties he would face in the three-year project to chronicle the long life of arguably the greatest surgeon of the 20th century and icon in Texas history.
Louisiana native DeBakey was a giant in medical history, pioneering new forms of surgery while acting as a catalyst for change at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. Unraveling the story was a political minefield for Miller. He concedes that had he not been named Michael E. DeBakey Fellow in the History of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, he might not have gained access to voluminous files donated by Katrin DeBakey to the National Library of Medicine after her husband’s death. And without the intercession of five DeBakey trainees, he said he would not have had access to DeBakey’s papers in the Baylor College of Medicine archive.
In his exhaustive biography, Miller describes DeBakey’s triumphs, surgical firsts, medical research and the fruits of his health care statesmanship. More important, he comes closest to defining what drove the man who literally worked day and night to fulfill all the roles he assumed in his nearly 100-year life. DeBakey was the child of Lebanese immigrants who held him to high standards of academics, work, ethics and achievement.
Even though he had never interviewed DeBakey, Miller learned the tales of his youth: reading the Encyclopedia Britannica as a youngster; remonstrating when his mother gave away his favorite cap to an orphanage; and leading academics in high school in Lake Charles.
The anecdotes in Miller’s book bring a personal touch that leavens the often technical descriptions of the surgeries DeBakey pioneered with his later nemesis, Dr. Denton Cooley.
The chronological segments into which the book is divided make reading it easier. The surgical descriptions are in subchapters “so that if you are a lay person and are not interested or confused by some of the language, you can skip the subchapter on thoracic aortic dissection,” Miller said. “I figure a lot of people who are going to the read the book, particularly outside of Houston, are going to be surgeons, and I think they will enjoy reading those details.”
As Miller describes, DeBakey followed the advice of mentors early in life — particularly Tulane University School of Medicine’s surgical chief, Dr. Alton Ochsner, who encouraged DeBakey to travel to Europe to study under leading surgeons in France and Germany. While in Heidelberg, under the tutelage of professor Martin Kirschner, the young surgeon learned more than medicine; he experienced the reality of the rising Third Reich under Adolf Hitler.
When he questioned the large number of tubal ligations and vasectomies performed at Kirschner’s clinic, he learned the truth — the surgeries in which he sometimes assisted were not the patients’ choice. He questioned the rationale given him and refused to continue.
After his European sojourn, DeBakey went back to New Orleans and Charity Hospital to continue his surgical career. Miller is realistic about many claims made about DeBakey’s early research. For example, with Ochsner, he published an early paper linking lung cancer and smoking, but they could not come up with a causative link, and Miller notes DeBakey dropped the matter. In later years, that paper came up repeatedly in descriptions of the surgeon’s research.
In 1948, he assumed the chairmanship of Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston. Miller notes that the start was rocky because local hospitals did not want DeBakey practicing or teaching on their premises, but the new VA hospital salvaged the relationship and eventually Baylor itself.
Miller painstakingly describes the surgical firsts in the 1950s and 1960s by DeBakey and Cooley in repairing dangerous aneurysms of the aorta. DeBakey developed and used the Dacron graft to strengthen failing blood vessels, another of the surgeon’s medical advances, Miller noted.
Miller also takes on the testy arena of the artificial heart developed in the Baylor labs but used first by Cooley, without permission. The author comes down firmly on DeBakey’s side in the controversy. He demonstrates in illustration and notes from his research that the heart was taken from the Baylor laboratory and implanted in patient Haskell Karp — and that the decision was premeditated. A Baylor committee concluded that the heart was developed at Baylor with federal funds and that guidelines to ensure ethical research were not followed, a decision that led to Cooley’s resignation from the faculty.
In 1969, DeBakey became Baylor’s president at a time of fiscal instability. As Miller notes, he persuaded the Texas Legislature to defray funding for the tuition of Texas students, doubling the student body and helping shore up the state’s dwindling physician resources without building a new school. He continued a concurrent breakneck surgical schedule and proceeded to give lectures on heart disease and surgery around the world.
Miller notes that Baylor’s prowess in scientific research gained notice under DeBakey’s leadership. Yet as his 70th birthday approached, the board of trustees chose a successor, and DeBakey became chancellor.
DeBakey became a medical statesman, acting as confidante to U.S. presidents and the leaders of other countries, often intervening to save their lives. When Houston Methodist Hospital and Baylor split in the early 2000s, both institutions suffered, but DeBakey could do little to salvage the situation.
DeBakey’s final illness was a Type 2 aortic dissection, a condition he had included in a classification system he devised. He survived with surgery and rehabilitation and on April 23, 2008, he received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor a U.S. civilian can receive. But on July 11 of the same year, he died, two months short of his 100th birthday.
There are those who will carp that “A Time for All Things” lacks their favorite DeBakey story, but Miller has achieved a milestone with this book.