Michael Debakey's Heart Just Wasn't Into It

Michael Debakey, the world-famous cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered bypass surgery and invented a host of devices to help heart patients, has died in Houston at the age of 99. Debakey performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries, including such luminaries as Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal and Nicaraguan leader Violetta Chamorro. Despite that, Debakey was clear:

He said celebrities didn't get special treatment on the operating table: "Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar."

Congratulations and 9 points awarded to Angelos or Bust, Go to Hell, The Kick the Bucket List, and Kraut's Picks. The Rosters and Standings have been updated.

[Associated Press]

'Superhuman' Michael Shows He's the Great DeBakey

Dr. Michael DeBakey is nearing his centenarian status and not letting up. Well, since the surgery a couple years ago that lengthened his life.

"I've made tremendous progress since I was so weak I couldn't get out of bed," he says. "I know I'm not going to be normal at 99, but I'd like to get back to a reasonably normal life. There are things I'd still like to do."

It's a remarkable recovery, even for a man whom friends recall as seeming superhuman in their earliest memories. He is the oldest person not only to survive surgery to repair a tear to the heart's primary artery, the aorta, but also to even undergo such an operation.

In the aftermath, DeBakey says, "I was like tissue."

If he had only spent his days creating the fountain of youth, DeBakey might just live forever.

[Houston Chronicle]