Medicine
- April 26 - Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco, performs the world's first human open fetal surgery.
- June 5 - AIDS pandemic begins when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports an unusual cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.
- Dr. Bruce Reitz performs the first successful heart–lung transplant on Mary Gohlke at Stanford Hospital.
Read more about this topic: 1981 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another’s company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)