Generous Doctor

As a young physician, Dr. Michael J. Brescia helped discover a way to increase the time a patient in kidney failure, could receive dialysis until a transplant could take place. Dr Michael and his colleagues had a chance to become very wealthy by selling the idea to a pharmaceutical company, however, as the doctor later recounted, his immigrant Italian father reasoned that God gave him the ability to invent the procedure, and that he had no right to hold up its delivery to people in danger of death. So instead of making a deal with the company, they made the Cimino-Brescia Arterial Fistula procedure, public.  It is still used today and is said to have saved the lives of millions of people.

For the rest of his life, Micheal Brescia gave his talent generously, working in poorer communities and was widely recognised as a world-leader in end-of-life medical care.

Dr Michael died recently, aged 90 and surround by his family, many of who had also become doctors – no doubt inspired by his generous legacy.