The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced the death. A
spokesman said the cause was heart disease. Thomas' work is among the greatest
success stories in the treatment of cancer. Bone marrow transplantation and its
sister therapy, blood stem cell transplantation, have improved the survival
rates for some blood cancers to upward of 90 per cent from almost zero.
This year, about 60,000 transplants will be performed worldwide,
according to the Hutchinson Center. "Imagine coming up with an idea,
making it a reality and touching that many lives," said Dr. Fred
Appelbaum, Thomas' friend and the director of the center's Clinical Research
Division. Thomas took after his father and became a doctor after getting his
medical degree from Harvard. In 1956, he performed the first human bone marrow
transplant.
Thomas, along with a small team of fellow researchers, including his
wife Dottie, pursued transplantations throughout the 1960s and 1970s despite
scepticism from the medical establishment. They sought to cure blood cancers by
destroying a patient's diseased bone marrow with near-lethal doses of radiation
and chemotherapy and then rescuing the patient by transplanting healthy marrow.
The aim was to establish a functioning and cancer-free blood and immune system.
The procedure would go on to become the standard treatment for many
sufferers of leukaemia and lymphoma. "He was brilliant, he was incredibly
generous and he was quick to deflect praise from himself to the individuals
around him," Appelbaum said. "At the same time, while he was quiet
and modest, he was stubborn," he added. "He believed in what he was
doing and he was going to make it happen. It's hard to imagine today how hard
it was to make this reality because it was against the prevailing medical
wisdom."
Thomas joined the University of Washington faculty in 1963. In 1974, he
became the first director of medical oncology at the Hutchinson Center. It is
now one of the world's top cancer treatment and research institutions. Thomas
also edited the first two editions of the bone marrow transplantations
reference book, "Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation," which would become
a bible for the field. "To the world, Don Thomas will forever be known as
the father of bone marrow transplantation, but to his colleagues at Fred Hutch
he will be remembered as a friend, colleague, mentor and pioneer," Larry
Corey, president of the research center, said in a statement. Thomas is
survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.
NZ Herald
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