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:
“Good medicine is bitter to the taste.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
That skins the vice o’ the top.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)