Dr. James W. West, RIP.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Dr. James W. West, 98, dead from complications related to old age. West was a pioneer in the area of organ transplants, having been part of a team of surgeons who performed the world’s first kidney transplant in 1950. He was already addicted to alcohol and, due to a fellow student’s introduction in medical school, amphetamines. He eventually sought help, which led him to study psychiatry and substance disorders. While we have not been able to ascertain when he got sober, we suspect it was long after he began performing surgery, but likely by the early 1970s when he helped to found the Haymarket Center in Chicago, a well-known alcohol and other-drug addiction treatment center. After “retiring” in 1982, he joined the Betty Ford Center at its inception, where he insisted that physicians serve as active members of addiction treatment teams. Betty Ford wrote, “This little bit of insight has prompted Dr. West to develop models of assessment and detoxification that have been duplicated around the world.” John Schwarzlose, president and chief executive of the Betty Ford Center, described Dr. West as “an addiction physician before there was even that term. It wasn’t so much the actual medication used; other people were using those. It was the attitude. He would look at them and say: ‘It’s the way you treat them. Alcoholics and addicts always feel like nobody wants to treat them. We make them feel like you’ve come to the right place.’ He would say, ‘My doctors and nurses treat people with love.’” We’ll miss you, Dr. West. Thanks for all you did.