Pioneering heart doctor dies at age 99

He was a totally remarkable man. Dr. Michael DeBakey was a world-famous, pioneering cardiovascular surgeon. I'll leave it to readers to look up on their favorite news web sites the AP article, which is a very good one. But I want to use this moment to pay tribute, and also use it as an opportunity to tell, especially young readers, what those times were like.

In the 1960's, 1970's and into the 1980's, there was very little that could be done for serious heart patients. Try to imagine what that was like. People would read obituaries and if the person died at age 65, people would actually say, "He" or "She lived a good life." If a person made it to 65 that was considered average to pretty good. This was because heart disease really had no remedies or cures.

So there were three groundbreaking heart surgeons, and Dr. DeBakey was one, who personally invented many of the techniques and devices that people take for granted today. And this was of HUGE interest in the news for years at a time. That is the point I'm trying to make (this is not one of those "appreciate how advanced medicine has become" blog posts, ha). What I'm trying to do is use news developments like this to paint you a quick portrait of what life was like not all that long ago, though it seems like eons now. So what I want to explain is the things that these three doctors did made HEADLINES in mainstream and tabloid press for years. Everyone knew their names, their faces, and what they were doing. In many ways, those heart surgeons were the start of mainstream interest in medicine. They made it exciting and personal yet were still 100% real. These guys were in a personal race to save lives, thousands of lives a year. They and their colleagues revolutionized medicine.

"Back then" people were not entertainment and celebrity crazed. The news was not full of what celebrities were up to. People were fascinated with, however, ongoing "struggles" for "breakthroughs in medicine," and especially in the area where everyone was the most likely to have a family member affected, and there were few options, being heart disease. So very often these guys were the lead off news item on TV network news and the front page story in the newspaper. There really has never been anything like it since then.

Therefore this is one example of where the country really was a better place in many ways some decades ago. People ALL were excited, interested and pulled for these guys, and rooted for their patients too. Everyone knew the names and status of every early heart transplant patient, for example. THAT was news, and the country was totally united in being interested in each development in heart medicine.

I hope this gave readers, especially the younger ones, a feeling for a very important and positive chapter in our cultural history. Think of how much has changed, and how negative and distorted much of the public interest and the media that shapes and cultivates it has become. It's not that there are not fantastic things going on in medicine. But there is a real sense of not being "on the team." For several decades all of America who watched TV or read the newspapers "were on the same team" regarding these heart doctor guys and the race for cures and medical devices to save lives. It was awesome, and that is one of the things I really miss about what our society has become today. I hope my reminiscing here about that great guy and all that he and his colleagues did also helps you see that things do not have to be as factional, nihilistic and bleak as many of you have been programmed to think it must be. I remember when small town folk, high school dropouts and just about any average folk were all excited about the lead stories of the latest development in heart medicine. What a country it was then!