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|  | | | Individual of the Week - Willem Kolff
"I wanted to make an artificial kidney that would save people. I was
convinced that I could do it, and I clung to it until it was done."
When Willem Johan Kolff began work on the
artficial kidney, few medical professionals believed such a thing was
possible. To draw a patient's blood, cleanse it of toxins, and return
it to the patient, seemed beyond the expertise of the most
sophisticated medical centers. Dr. Kolff had no great resources to draw
on. He was the sole internist in a small-town hospital in the middle of
an occupied country during wartime. All materials were in short supply
and local manufacturers were forbidden to do business with anyone but
the occupying army. The first 15 patients to receive the treatment
failed to recover, but Dr. Kolff persevered. The dialysis treatment he
pioneered has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women
and chidren, all over the world.
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