A bill to award a congressional gold medal to Michael Ellis DeBakey, M.D.

Michael Ellis DeBakey, M.D., was born on September 7, 1908, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Shaker and Raheeja DeBakey.

Dr. DeBakey, at the age of 23 and still a medical student, reported a major invention, a roller pump for blood transfusions, which later became a major component of the heart-lung machine used in the first successful open-heart operation.

Even though Dr. DeBakey had already achieved a national reputation as an authority on vascular disease and had a promising career as a surgeon and teacher, he volunteered for military service during World War II, joining the Surgeon General’s staff and rising to the rank of Colonel and Chief of the Surgical Consultants Division.

As a result of this first-hand knowledge of military service, Dr. DeBakey made numerous recommendations for the proper staged management of war wounds, which led to the development of mobile army surgical hospitals or MASH units, and earned Dr. DeBakey the Legion of Merit in 1945.

After the war, Dr. DeBakey proposed the systematic medical follow-up of veterans and recommended the creation of specialized medical centers in different areas of the United States to treat wounded military personnel returning from war, and from this recommendation evolved the Veterans Affairs Medical Center System and the establishment of the Commission on Veterans Medical Problems of the National Research Council.

In 1948, Dr. DeBakey joined the Baylor University College of Medicine, where he developed the first surgical residency program in the city of Houston, and today, guided by Dr. DeBakey’s vision, the College is one of the most respected health science centers in the Nation.

In 1953, Dr. DeBakey performed the first successful procedures to treat patients who suffered aneurysms leading to severe strokes, and he later developed a series of innovative surgical techniques for the treatment of aneurysms enabling thousands of lives to be saved in the years ahead.

In 1964, Dr. DeBakey triggered the most explosive era in modern cardiac surgery, when he performed the first successful coronary bypass, once again paving the way for surgeons worldwide to offer hope to thousands of patients who might otherwise succumb to heart disease.

Two years later, Dr. DeBakey made medical history again, when he was the first to successfully use a partial artificial heart to solve the problems of a patient who could not be weaned from a heart-lung machine following open-heart surgery.

In 1968, Dr. DeBakey supervised the first successful multi-organ transplant, in which a heart, both kidneys, and lung were transplanted from a single donor into 4 separate recipients.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dr. DeBakey to the position of Chairman of the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke, leading to the creation of Regional Medical Programs established to encourage and assist in the establishment of regional cooperative arrangements among medical schools, research institutions, and hospitals, for research and training.

In the mid-1960s, Dr. DeBakey pioneered the field of telemedicine with the first demonstration of open-heart surgery to be transmitted overseas by satellite.

In 1969, Dr. DeBakey was elected the first President of Baylor College of Medicine.

In 1969, President Lyndon B. Johnson bestowed on Dr. DeBakey the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, and in 1985, President Ronald Reagan conferred on him the National Medal of Science.

Working with NASA engineers, he refined existing technology to create the DeBakey Ventricular Assist Device, one-tenth the size of current versions, which may eliminate the need for heart transplantation in some patients.