E U R OT R A N S P L A N T
newsletter
203
December
2005
ISSN 0920-2366
CONTENTS
1 Introduction
Introduction
2 Program of the Munich
Conference
3 Living with the boys:
1971 - 1996
5 It’s my kidney!
6 ‘Uitbellers!’… the students’
perspective
8 Words of Thanks
This is the first ET Newsletter in a new era after a long period with stable. This
culminated in an incredible explosion of applause and respectful recognition of
the works of Dr. Bernard Cohen, Dr. Guido Persijn and Prof. Dr. Yves Vanrenterghem
during the annual ET Meeting.
In this Newsletter we would like to take the opportunity to reflect on the many
festivities given in honor of Bernard, Guido and Yves. This started with the invited
conference on organ transplantation in Munich. The symposium was followed by a
dinner in royal surroundings organized and hosted by our new president and chairman
of the Board, Dr. Bruno Meiser.
A farewell reception for all business relations of Eurotransplant took place in
The Hooglandse Kerk in Leiden on September 27, 2005.
A final goodbye was held during the Presidential Symposium as well as in the
Assembly at the annual ET Meeting in the Hotels of Oranje in Noordwijk on October 6
and 7, 2005.
Eurotransplant Newsletter is a
publication of the Eurotransplant
International Foundation.
The editor welcomes articles
pertaining to organ donation,
allocation and transplantation.
If there are issues not discussed
in the Eurotransplant Newsletter,
that you would like to see, please
contact the editor. Send copy
preferably via e-mail:
A. Oosterlee, MD MBA
editor,
Eurotransplant,
P.O. Box 2304,
2301 CH Leiden,
the Netherlands
E-mail:
[email protected]
During the ET Meeting, the two former directors received, among many things, royal
decorations form Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, an expression of
gratitude via fax from the German Bundespräsident Köhler, a declaration of gratitude
of the Rumanian Government and various emotional and eloquent speeches from
many prominent members of the European transplantation field. In the evening each
ET member country paid tribute to the three in a personal and often very funny way.
Thank you Guido, Bernard and Yves and all the best for the future!
Wim van Zwet, Axel Rahmel and I, very much look forward to working with you.
We are in the middle of introducing ourselves to the authorities in the respective
ET member states. Although we have met many of you already, we look forward
to meeting the rest of you soon, in any case during the ET Winter Meeting in Fügen
Austria from January 25 until 27, 2006.
Arie Oosterlee
Director
Program of the Munich Conference, September 9, 2005
“Organ Donation, Procurement, Allocation and Transplantation
in a Globalized World - Lessons From Different Cultures”
Moderators:
Kathryn Wood, President, The Transplantation Society
Moderators:
Bruno Meiser and Ferdinand Mühlbacher
14:00 – 14:20
Incentives for Organ Transplantation
and Yves Vanrenterghem
11:00 – 11:20
Current Ethical, Religious, Social and Legal Issues in Organ
Blanca Miranda-Serrano
Transplantation
George M. Abouna
14:20 – 14:40
Low Donation Rate in Germany - Reasons and Solutions
Bruno Reichart
Program of the Munich Conference
11:20 – 11:40
Transplantation in a Country With an Extreme Shortage
of Deceased Donors: Background and Sequelae
14:40 – 15:00
Tetsuya Kiuchi
Transforming the “Unacceptable” Donor: Outcomes From the
Adoption of a Standardized Donor Management Technique
Stephen R. Large
11:40 – 12:00
Organ Donation - Trends in the Multi-Cultural South
African Society
15:00 – 15:30
Coffee Break
Moderators:
Guido Persijn and Bernard Cohen
15:30 – 15:50
A Novel Approach to Organ Allocation Based on
Susan M. Vosloo
12:00 – 12:20
Equal Access to Organ Transplantation in South America
Jos Osmar Medina Pestana
Urgency and Expected Outcome - Lessons From the Lung
12:20 – 12:40
The Iranian Model Renal Transplant Program Ahad J. Ghods
12:40 – 13:00
Blood Group Incompatible Transplantation in Infants -
Mark L. Barr
15:50 – 16:10
Publication of Transplant Results - Impact on
a Solution to Overcome the Donor Problem in This
Selection of Donors and Recipients
Particular Age Group?
Francis L. Delmonico
Lori J. West
16:10 – 16:30
13:00 – 14:00
Program of the Munich Conference
2
Lunch Break
Beyond Transplantation: Regenerative Medicine and its
Potential Global Roles
Abdallah S. Daar
Presidential Symposium, October 6, 2005 Chaired by Prof. Dr. F. Mühlbacher
I will start with Guido
Born in Belgium in 1945, he spent most of his schooling
and life in Holland and joined Eurotransplant in 1971 as
student assistant in charge of amongst others the allocation of donor organs.
These were busy and happy days with Henk Schippers in
charge of setting up the Eurotransplant organisation
and making it clear to me that I could play the role of
president and give advice on the research, but that he was
the boss. An interesting experience for me. We were all
located in the semi permanent building 23 with all the
characteristics of a commune. These were very fruitful
days both for the research as well for the patient care.
Guido fitted in with perfection and got my attention
very early. This was mainly thanks to a number of characteristics of him, which were unusual for a student. In the
first place he was neat and correct, not the most typical
characteristic of a Leiden student of these days. Secondly,
he had a fascination for and fantastic memory of numbers, and finally he was unexpectedly quite strong and
athletic and liked to show that off. He gave me once
the shivers when on a boating day with the whole group
he passed from my boat to the boat we were pulling via
the line used for the pulling. Renee Persijn was quite
proud and emphasized that Guido had been trained as
a paratrooper.
And on top of all that he was quite social. That was the
start. If I look back and realise what has come out of this
young student, I am impressed.
His name is on several hundreds of papers, but I will
mention only two. In both instances he was the first
author. The first concerns the most important paper on
the pre-transplant blood transfusion effect. It was done in
the typical Persijn manner; by interviewing the patients
personally and not trusting the data which were provided
by the residents, he was able to show that a single pretransplant blood transfusion significantly improves renal
graft survival. It formed the basis for many studies from
our group and others and was a hit in the Lancet. The
second published in the NEJM concerns the finding
that matching improves not only graft- but also patient
survival. Both findings are still true as of today.
But Guido’s contributions are not only scientific. In his
CV under the heading ‘miscellaneous’, he lists 38 activities
most of them relating to transplantation, but 8 showing
his much broader interest in people and the world they
live in such as:
Dutch inventory Society,
Committee Holland sea search
AIDS committee
Leiden University Fund
3 October Vereeniging Leiden
Leiden Faculty Club
His very special link with the café on the corner l’Esperance
was not mentioned.
It is clear that Guido has been an excellent networker, a
function vital for the success of the Eurotransplant operation with all its meetings all over Europe. But above all
Guido was completely reliable. If he promised to do
something you could be certain that he would do it
and in this way it happened that he slowly developed
in the very important person or VIP he truly is. A symbol
of reliability, a man who understands society and its
unpredictability and all that with a good sense of humour;
the elixir of life.
And this brings me to Bernard.
Born in Bloemendaal in 1947. He studied economics in
Amsterdam and was among others a teacher in Amsterdam, which gave him an advantage when lecturing. I must
confess that I learned a lot from him on this point.
When Henk Schippers applied for the job of director, he
was – as he told after his last board meeting – the only
one. When Henk was due to leave, we advertised again
for the position of director of Eurotransplant. This time
3
Living with the boys: 1971 - 1996
When I was asked whether I would like to say a few
words during this very special Presidential symposium,
I said without a hesitation immediately: YES!
Why this sudden enthusiasm? The reason is a simple
one as I had shortly before realised, that:
a. I had been working with Bernard and Guido 20 to 25
years
b. left them in 1996, but
c. had forgotten to give them a written testimony
This invitation gave me an opportunity to make up
for my failure to do so in the past by giving here and
now a public testimony.
Living with the boys: 1971 - 1996
Living with the boys: 1971 - 1996
By Prof. Dr. J.J. van Rood
Living with the boys: 1971 - 1996
Living with the boys: 1971 - 1996
4
there were two applicants, Bernard and a business man
from the Zaan, who was 15 years older. They were interviewed by me and Jaap de Graeff, head of the department
of nephrology, old time friend and teacher. Jaap thought,
for reasons never explained to me, that Bernard would suit
me best. And so he was appointed. Henk moved to the
position of secretary/treasurer of Eurotransplant, which
made the switch a smooth one.
I soon learned that the new director had an independent
mind and a good nose to find out from which direction
the wind was blowing, as the expression in Dutch goes.
It was after a meeting in Maastricht, that he told me that
only looking for a good HLA match between recipient
and donor was a too narrow task for Eurotransplant and
that he had more great ambitions. To say, that I reacted
enthusiastically, is not completely true, but Bernard was
of course right as we have witnessed in the last 25 years
or so. Because of this insight of him, Eurotransplant
has become an important player in the decision making
process of the government regarding all matters related
to organ transplantation.
But Bernard would not be Bernard, if he would not have
taken the initiative of setting up his own organisation.
It started of with the Bio Implant Services in 1987. Originally a daughter organisation of Eurotransplant, later an
independent foundation, taking care of non vital tissues
such as bone, heart valves, cornea and skin. It was in the
beginning certainly not running smooth as I remember
from the days that I was the president, but the organisation (also thanks to the support of the NTS) is alive and
well as of today and plays an active and constructive role
in the coordination of donation and distribution of these
important tissues in the Netherlands and the Eurotransplant domain.
The years with Eurotransplant were in one aspect living
under a cloud: the cloud of the donor shortage, which
would not go away. Many were the efforts to resolve this
threat resulting in 25% mortality of the patients on the
waiting list and it was again Bernard, who in 1995
together with Celia Wight made another important contribution: The European Donor Hospital Education Program
or EDHEP. Now active in over 30 countries it has a significant impact on the training of those who must ask
the most difficult question at the most difficult moment.
I speak out of a personal experience as I participated in
the training as well with an actress playing the role of the
bereaved mother, who had just lost her son in such a way
that it haunted me for days afterwards.
In parallel, together with Leo Roels, Bernard started Donor
Action, a program which attempts to achieve quality assurance in the whole donation program. Also this program is
activated in 18 countries in Europe, North and South
America and Asia. In an evaluation of its effects an overall increase of donation rates of almost 60% was recorded.
It is no wonder that the title of his thesis which he
defended in 2001 in Maastricht was ‘Balancing supply
and demand in organ transplantation’. One thing is
certain: Bernard made his own impact in the field of
organ transplantation or as I wrote to the new president:
the transplant community stands in debt to both Bernard
and Guido for what they have achieved in these past
3 decades.
There is of course much more to say about Bernard.
I must confess that I was some times quite jealous of him.
He has that most irritating characteristic, just as my wife
Sacha, to be completely relaxed on moments that I am
under high tension, for instance before the opening of
the Eurotransplant meeting or during a sailing trip.
And then to be suddenly alert handling the rudder as if
he was captain Twain.
Of course Bernard has some of the characteristics of a
Yuppie but we will not go into that now, because I would
like here and now express my gratitude for the fact that
Bernard is also ‘ein Mensch’. This Yiddish expression
means that he has his heart on the right place. Being the
founder and first president of Eurotransplant was a lot of
fun… most of the time.
But sometimes things go haywire, people you relied upon
turn against you etc. It did not happen often, but every
time it happened, Bernard came to my room, or to my
boat, when I was there. We did not say much, but he was
there and it counted. Thank you Bernard for what you did
for Eurotransplant and thank you for being ‘ein Mensch’.
It’s my kidney!!!
By Prof. Dr. U. Frei
Once upon a time there was a poor uremic chap, suffering
some years from end stage renal disease, from fatigue, from
itching and fluid overload. He has to go to a dialysis unit
three times a week, – to be punctured with thick needles and
– to spend endless boring sessions.
Once this poor man has a dream. It is a dream about
receiving his own kidney. And about meeting people
who are able and willing to help him to fulfill his dream.
As every night he begins to dream about his own kidney, and
when he sees the desired kidney on the horizon, he starts to
walk the long way towards the kidney and he whispers
“It's my kidney” but…
a doctor called Mr. Dr. Grabber crosses his
way and stops him saying “NO this is not your
kidney, you first have to stay on my dialysisunit for a few years because I have invested a
lot of money in these machines you must
understand…”
when our poor patient has recovered a bit and
his nice dream starts again:
one heavy chap in green clothes – obviously
a surgeon named Dr. Mill-Creek - steps in his
way and shouts “NO this is not yours, this
is my kidney, because I have harvested it.
This is an Austrian kidney and I need it for my own kidney
program, go away elsewhere and wait...
our poor patient awakes cold sweating and after some time
when his dream begins again
a doctor in a white lab coat – obviously an old experienced
professor with deep roots in science assisted by somebody
called Dr. Santa Claas - shows him a paper-outprint and says
NO this is not your kidney, your have a poor match, no class II
-compatibility and even no DR6-match, go back to the waiting queue and wait some more years for a full-house-match.
The poor patient in his innocent dream has not the slightest
idea what this all means and he tries again to dream from his
own kidney but…
An important looking men who looks like a big House obviously a surgeon too steps in his way and says: NO this is
not your kidney, because there is a regional imbalance in the
East. Ask your lazy local people for a kidney,
The poor patient is about to become crazy and it takes him
some minutes to recall his dream from his own kidney, but
suddenly…
An important Nephrologist called Prof. Mr. van somethinglike announces: people like you don’t deserve a kidney
because your disease is not suitable for a transplant at all,
this will NOT be your kidney.
After a longer period of time the patient begins to recover
from hearing such strong opinions from all these important
personalities and continues with his dream, but not very long:
A seriously looking old lawyer in a dark suite called Mr.
Writer steps in his way and says NO this is not your kidney,
because only the Bundesärztekammer is in a position to
decide whose kidney this is and be aware there is no way to
sue us, try it!! Ha, Ha!
The patient is nearly exhausted and only very
frightened he tries again to dream from his
own kidney and of course again there is somebody to disturb him:
A men in a grey coat, with some official folders in his hands, named Mr. Singler stops
him and says: NO it's not that easy to get a
kidney! Learn, the kidney belongs to the public
and first of all we shall have to pass
a law for this kind of cases, and then some
execution rules and contracts too, wait some
years till we have finished this job.
The poor patient cries because of this nightmare about his
kidney thinking that he will certainly die before receiving a
kidney, but
Just like two angels two friendly looking men come along to
join him, one introduces himself as Bernard and the other
as Guido. They help him to calm down and restore his faith
again by telling him, don't worry, we will deal with all these
naughty and obstructive guys, laws and rules. We assure
you, you will get your own kidney, because we are the directors of EUROTRANSPLANT and we will take care of you
until a successful transplant is conducted.
And the dream continues relieved – the poor patient undergoes a kidney transplantation some time after he has met
Bernard and Guido. The kidney is running well and produces
liters of the desired fluid. And the poor man puts his hands
on his belly and whispers smiling in his dream "It's my kidney",
“It's my kidney”!!
But suddenly he gets disturbed again by a small man called
Mr. Prof. Frightening-Worm who is jelling on him “give this
kidney back immediately" the transplant was not according
to the rules, I have detected this by checking the papers…
But the patient smiles and tells the man:
NO Sir, it's too late now – “It's my kidney! It's my own
kidney now”
This was only a fairy tale, similarities with acting people are not on
purpose and purely coincidental.
It’s my kidney!
This will be an unusual farewell speech with no power point
sheets, sorry. But I will condense the story of the last decades
of European transplant politics in a small fairy tale seen from
the perspective of a patient. It starts as always:
the poor patient starts to cry and it takes him again some
time before he can continue to dream of his own kidney.
But another old Prof. called Dr. for-Free shows up and says
NO this kidney is not yours, because you are not old enough,
this kidney is for my senior program only… suddenly
some moments later a lady Prof. Mrs. Opener shows up and
says the contrary: NO this is not your kidney, you are too
old, this kidney is for my sick children only and definitively
not for you.
5
It’s my kidney!
Dear Bernard, dear Guido, dear Friends and Guests,
‘Uitbellers!’… the students’ perspective
By Prof. Dr. I. Borel Rinkes
‘Uitbellers!’… the students’ perspective
Dear chairman, Dear Bernard and Guido,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
‘Uitbellers!’… the students’ perspective
6
It is my great pleasure and a privilege to have been invited
to speak on this memorable occasion, the farewell of the
two directors who have pulled off such an effort during so
many years. I’m speaking to you Bernard and Guido, on
behalf of the bunch of medical students called “uitbellers”,
a.k.a. transplant allocation coordinators. We were the ones
ladies and gentlemen, whom you must have heard
blurting away over the phone in the middle of so many
nights regarding transplantation logistics in often crooked
english or STEINKOHLEN DEUTSCH. And as I’m their
spokesman, a collective sorry is probably the only way for
me to get out of here in one piece. For we were -and areyoung, inexperienced, full of energy, enthusiasm, and
mistakes. But the two people who were always ready to
help us with advice, or kick our butt if we had done
something stupid, never mind the hour, were Guido and
Bernard. They were the interface between the transplant
professionals and us, the uitbellers.
I joined Eurotransplant in 1977, as a second year medstudent. The uitbellers were Theo de By, Bert Groenewoud,
Rutger Ploeg, the late Paul van Suylichem, Napoleon Coene,
Egbert Ottevanger and Gerard Kieft. Kieft had asked me to
join, explaining that it was a nice way to make some extra
money during the nighthours and weekends that you
weren’t supposed to study anyway, and besides, most of
the time you could sleep at home. Little was I to know
what an impact that decision would have on my life and
how much I would learn and experience during the 7
years that I was uitbeller. Friends asking friends was, and
still is, the key to success. A group of student friends from
the same fraternity garantueed taking over from and
covering for each other no matter what to ensure the 24/7
continuity whenever one of us was unable to work.
Typical for us uitbellers was that we developed through
the job a rather mild and not altogether unpleasant form
of schizofrenia. In general, our lives consisted of a little
studying now and then, but predominantly of socializing
and growing up in the fraternity world, with students
houses, and Minerva with all its do’s and dont’s, its little
social rules, obligations and functions that we found so
incredibly important. We had big mouths, and were full of
ourselves and our friendships, of sporting, partying, singing, and drinking. We were very much part of the
traditional student life and we were completely NOT serious.
And at the same time we were part of an organization that
existed at the foremost tip of medical progress, transplantation was for the strongest, the cleverest, and the most
pioneering of medical minds. So we were confronted with
a job that was to be taken MOST seriously.
Little did we know at first of van Rood’s immunological
miracles and breakthroughs, both existing and pending.
Kieft and the others had instructed me: You just speak
German of some sort on the phone so that they kind of
understand you; keep your head together and you’ll do
fine. I soon was to find out how heavy the weight of
responsibility can feel. I remember us taking over on a
sundaymorning from Napoleon Coene, now an established
orthopedic surgeon in the country, who was sitting there,
completely pale and unable to speak. He had apparently
done something terribly wrong, accidently having
switched planes or kidneys, and clearly, through the telephone intercom, we could hear a furious dr. Jakubowski
yell: ABER HERR COENO WAS MACHEN SIE JETZT? It has
become a legendary phrase for when something goes
wrong.
It was a time when we were indeed allowed to stay home
during the on-call shifts, carrying a semaphone the size of
a suitcase wherever we went. The thing was so large that
Egbert and Theo could clearly see the little red light
blinking after they had accidentally dropped the entire
thing in the Rapenburg canal. It was well before the age of
multiple organ donations, and we had a small office with
a cramped bedroom, telephone cards of all transplant
centres in a pretty sophisticated telephone with intercom,
and a telex machine for matching and trying to get a
kidney to Kuwait or Ankara when all else had failed. The
life-span of explanted kidneys was only approaching 24
hours, leaving us with a rather tight time frame to organize typing, matching, and particularly, transportation to
the acceptor’s centre. It was highly exciting. Sometimes,
we found ourselves in a situation that we could, or had to,
accompany a kidney on transport. One of us took several
weeks to recover from an ambulance ride with a notoriously wild driver named Jelle, who took the ghostrider’s
side of Rotterdam’s tunnelstrace in order to reach Dijkzigt
in time. I myself once witnessed a crazy ride through
Leiden on a saturdayafternoon with a flourishing market
community pleasantly strolling in the historical city centre
while Jelle was frantically honking the horn doing 90
miles an hour.
Amidst these developments, Bernard and Guido were our
bosses as well as our patrons. Every second Monday we
had a meeting in Bernard’s room, where we got grilled and
While time was essential, and resticted, we learned to
improvise at the highest level, for the greatest disgrace of
an uitbeller was when you had to acknowledge that you
could not find a recipient for an organ presented to ET in
time. “Improvise and be daring” was very much on my
mind when I at the age of 20, had a direct connection with
the cockpit talking to a bewildered and grumpy Boeing
747 captain, explaining to him that he had to hold his
plane on the ground for another hour to carry a kidney to
Hamburg. Just like one of the colleagues who hired the
Turkish cleaning man Amir early in the morning to help
him get a kidney accepted in a Turkish hospital where no
English speaking staff could be found. However, we were
not always successful. Like the time we were asked to aid
in the transport of a Japanese dog that had died of an
extremely rare condition, for which tremendous interest
existed in a British immunology-lab. The dead dog was
put on air-transport with a stopover in Rome. Despite our
efforts the Italians had misunderstood us and expected a
healthy dog in a cage. Panic arose when they found out
the dog was dead. In a joined effort they managed to find
a suitable replacement just in time. And while the dead
dog with the exceptional disease was being buried in
Rome, we got buried by the British researchers.
We were also very good at using all the resources the
ET-office harboured. Such as the millions of clandestine
photocopies that were run on the ET-copymachine helping
all of us through the exams with the aid of copied old
exam-questions. Or the fact that we had found our way to
van Rood’s refridgerator containing a much desired bottle
of Jenever. You’ll be happy to know that we always were
very keen on filling the resulting gap as indicated by the
lines that had been drawn on the bottle by the owner.
Of course we could only find water to replace the jenever.
Mr chairman, ladies and gentlemen, Bernard and Guido
were not only out bosses, directors and patrons. In times
characterized by constant and rapid change and in a
frontline organization, they allowed us maximal freedom,
while simultaneously giving us enormous responsibilities.
By doing so they made us very much feel part of the
Eurotransplant Family, and its pioneering spirit. This has
always made ME feel proud. And I’m sure the others feel
the same way.
Bernard and Guido, during the preparation of this talk
I have called upon a number of former uitbellers and old
friends, all of whom painted a similar picture of the two of
you. Some are here, many are not, but I’m convinced that
all of them join me in thanking you from the bottom of
our hearts, for all that you guys have meant to us, have
been to us, and have done for us, just as they join me in
wishing you all the best of happiness and health, together
with your families.
‘Uitbellers!’… the students’ perspective
while I was the one who had done that. And Guido could
sometimes be a bit too much ahead of us, such as when he
advised one night to organize a split transplantation, not
realizing that it wasn’t a liver but a heart at stake.
7
‘Uitbellers!’… the students’ perspective
praised for our respective failures and accomplishments.
Bernard, the glamour guy, speaking fast, excited at times,
but always on top of things. We were informed of all new
developments, political aspects of the unique European
endeavour that Eurotransplant represented, exciting
findings and technical progress. Bernard was demanding
as the ceo of us little salesmen, ambitious and keen. Guido
was almost the opposite, but just as keen on the wellbeing of the project and the organization,… AND his
patiens. More subdued, more relaxed in appearance, he
was highly respected by us, not in the least for his
enormous medical knowledge. He never failed to impress
us with his demonstration of knowing all the Leiden
patients by heart, including their individual HLA typing.
Both were always and readily available when advice was
needed during the night shifts that we had to cover.
Bernard, rapidly explaining what we had to do, Guido,
often hard to hear because of the background noise of
l’Esperance, his favourite pub.
Bernard, so eager to impress us, once had a skiing machine installed at the top of the stairs of the EToffice above
the bloodbank. Many of us exercised on that contraption
during the night, much to the dismay of the lab-assistants
of the bloodbank residing below. And although some of us
were having rough times once in a while when demonstrating a lack of responsibility (I believe I got myself
nearly fired once or twice) the two directors made clear
that if you performed well, the rewards were tangible. To
us they became a symbol for the daring and pioneering
spirit of eurotransplant. We were invited to join them on
many meetings, they made sure we got in contact with
many leading experts in the transplant world, and
we were happy to be used as congress assistants when
conferences were held in Holland. Many -if not all- of us
are thankful to Bernard and Guido, and of course to Jon
van Rood, for providing us not merely with a job, but with
a unique opportunity to mould and pursue our personal
careers in a specifically desirable way. PhD theses,
research projects abroad, training positions and fellowships in surgery, medicine, immunology, transplantation
logistics are just a few examples of the opportunities we
were given.
Bernard and Guido you have been instrumental in this
respect, just like in the initiation of numerous international friendships many of us enjoy until today. You were also
terrible, just like us. When Bert Groenewoud once had
such a busy schedule with so many oncall nights in a
Christmas Holiday that he fell asleep during the christmas
dinner at the house of his new girlfriend’s family, dropping his head in the soup-terrine blowing bubbles, this led
to the untimely end of a promising love. Conversely,
I remember that Guido once fell asleep while listening to
me on the phone, urgently needing his advice. Despite
my desperate shouting I was unable to revive him, feeling
forced to call upon an angry Bernard who was not on call.
Bernard could be as untactical as hell: Slamming his fist
in a candy-house made for him by Napoleon in search
for his Santaclaus-present, while the candy house was
the present. Or rewarding Victor Renardel with a tie for
organizing the first heart transplantation through ET,
Words of Thanks
By Dr. Guido G. Persijn, past Medical Director
Also on behalf of my colleague Dr. Bernard Cohen, I
would like to express our sincere gratitude to all members
of the Eurotransplant (ET) ‘family’ for their support and
confidence in us as directors of ET over the last 30 years.
Thanks to your cooperation and enthusiasm, we were
able, together with all of you, to build ET as the organ
exchange organization, in all its facets, as it is today.
Words of Thanks
Our farewell party at the last ET meeting in Noordwijk was
also an expression of your warm and kind attitude
towards us. It was an unforgettable event for which we
thank especially the representatives of the six different
ET countries for their nice and fantastic contributions
during that party. Really great!
Words of Thanks
8
A special word of thanks for the local organizing
committee at the ET office in Leiden for all their fantastic
ideas and the enormous amount of extra work, resulting
in this really wonderful happening. We will never forget
this party of all parties, neither will we forget you.
We thank you once again and wish you all a good, great
and prosperous future.