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Putting the fire back into Yale's transplant program

Liver surgeon Sukru Emre has high expectations for Yale’s organ transplant program and his colleagues in the OR. He also displays a gentle, quiet confidence: “If you use your brain, your sweat and your heart,” he says, “there is no way that you are going to be failing.”

When Prometheus stole fire from the gods, Zeus condemned him to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day. The myth, says surgeon Sukru Emre, M.D., shows that the ancient Greeks knew that the liver could regenerate—a property that makes it possible for Emre to take part of a healthy person’s liver and use it to sustain another’s life.

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