Narrative Highlight: John Watson

At part of the 50th Anniversary meeting of ASAIO we conducted preliminary exchanges with individuals working in the field of artificial organs. The text below comes from John Watson, PhD.

[return to highlights]

1. Which individual or event do you attribute the greatest historical significance in the advancement of organ replacement devices or machines? Please explain why.

Senator Frist's Hastings Lecture of 1996 -- Following the lecture Senator Frist asked for the recommendations from the NIH Study of Support for a Bioengineering Report of 1993. He asked me to send the report, marked confidential, so that his staff would not filter the information before he had a chance to see it. Senator Frist then asked the NIH about the status of the report's recommendations. His request, in part, led to the events that resulted in legislating the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the NIH.