Callender, Clive O. 1936–

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Clive O. Callender 1936–

Transplant surgeon

“Most of the highly intelligent blacks are going into other fields and that’s disappointing, but to be a doctor you don’t have to be brilliant. You have to care, be kind and you have to have common sense,” Dr. Clive O. Callender, one of the foremost transplant surgeons and the only top-rated black transplant surgeon in the United States, was quoted as saying in Black Enterprise. Director of Howard University Hospital Transplant Center in Washington, D.C., Callender is also professor and vice-chair of Howard University Hospital’s department of surgery. As a transplant surgeon, he found much resistance to organ donor programs among minorities and has since written more than 50 articles and given numerous presentations to explain organ transplantation throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States.

“When commitment really counts, people can count on Dr. Clive O. Callender,” declared a Jet correspondent about the surgeon who is the only black among 18 distinguished scientists appointed to the National Organ Transplant Task Force. “He has put his whole heart and soul into re-educating Black America about an issue of growing importance—organ and tissue transplantation.”

Born on November 16, 1936, in New York City, Callender had ambitions to be a doctor from the time he was a young child. A sermon he heard while seated with his aunt in the Ebenezer Gospel Tabernacle prompted his decision to become a medical missionary. Callender recalled in Black Enterprise, “I was listening to the minister who spoke about the two greatest occupations in the world: ministering to the souls of mankind and to the bodies of mankind.”

After graduating with degrees in chemistry and physiology from Hunter College in New York in 1959, Callender entered Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1963 he graduated first in his class. Intending to specialize in internal medicine, Callender took his internship at the University of Cincinnati. He was preparing a patient for gastrointestinal surgery when he determined he wanted to change fields. “As an internist, all I could do was get the patient ready for surgery,” he related in Black Enterprise. “That wasn’t fulfilling enough, so I finished my training in surgery.”

Callender’s desire to become a medical missionary was fulfilled when he finished his residency work at Howard

At a Glance…

Born Clive Orville Callender, November 16, 1936, in New York, NY; son of Joseph and Ida Burke; married Fern Irene Marshall; children: Joseph, Ealena, Arianne. Education : Hunter College, A.B., 1959; Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN, M.D., 1963.

Transplant surgeon. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, intern, 1963-64; Harlem Hospital, resident, 1964-65; Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, DC, assistant resident, 1965-66; Memorial Hospital for Cancer & Allied Diseases, assistant resident, 1966-67; Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital, chief resident, 1968-69, instructor, 1969-70; Washington, DC General Hospital, medical officer, 1970-71; Port Harcourt General Hospital, Nigeria, consultant, 1970-71; Howard University Medical College, assistant professor, 1973-76, director of transplant center, 1974—, professor and vice-chair of department of surgery, 1982—;has held numerous workshops.

Member: American Society of Transplant Surgeons (chair of membership committee), Society of Academic Surgeons, National Kidney Foundation (president of national capital area, 1979—).

Awards: Hoffman LaRoche Award, 1961; Joseph Collins Scholarship Award, 1961-63; National Medical Association Scholarship Award, 1963; Charles Nelson Gold Medal, Meharry Medical College, 1963; Daniel Hale Williams Award, Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital, 1969; American Cancer Society fellow, 1965-66; Hall of Fame, Hunter College Alumni, 1989.

Addresses: Office— Howard University Medical College, 2041 Georgia Avenue, Washington, DC 20060.

University Hospital. Shortly after he became an instructor in surgery at Howard, Callender was asked to join the surgery staff of Fort Harcourt General Hospital in Nigeria during the Biafran Civil War. Upon his return to the United States in 1971, he investigated transplant surgery. Receiving a transplant fellowship, Callender studied for two years under the first black transplant surgeon, Dr. Samuel Kountz, at the University of Minnesota Hospital. When he came back to Howard University in June of 1973, Callender established Howard’s transplant center. Interested in advancing transplant surgery around the globe, Callender later founded the transplant center named in his honor at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, in 1983.

During the 1980s, Callender became puzzled by black opposition to organ donations. His research led to several conclusions. Blacks, he felt, mistrusted the medical establishment, assuming discrimination played a role in organ distribution. Secondly, religious beliefs about maintaining the body intact for life after death also determined the attitudes of some blacks. And finally, many feared white doctors would declare them dead prematurely to obtain organs for whites.

Overall, Callender found, minorities lacked the information essential to judge the benefits of organ donations. Since Callender had noted that blacks suffer higher incidences of kidney failure and hypertension as well as lower success rates after organ transplants, he sought programs to recruit more minority donors. The surgeon observed in Jet, “Increasing the pool of Black organ donors and obtaining antibodies that better define unique antigens in Blacks, brightens the future of organ transplantation in Blacks, so that what was once a dilemma is now a national commitment.”

Funded by Dow Chemical Company, Callender and his racially integrated team composed of a doctor, a transplant recipient, a donor or a member of a donor’s family, and a person waiting for a transplant present programs at workshops. Designed to confront potential donors’ doubts, dialogue among participants outlines the difficulty and necessity of organ transplants. After the team finishes, donor cards are distributed among the audience. Callender divulged to Paul Delany in the New York Times, “The response is immediate. People sign cards pledging to donate.”

During Callender’s campaign to increase donor participation, the percentage of blacks signing donor cards rose from 7 percent in 1985 to 24 percent in 1990. The percentage of blacks who were willing to donate relatives’ organs also increased, climbing from 55 percent in 1985 to 70 percent in 1990. Acknowledged in the New York Times as “the father and leader of the effort to educate minorities and enlist more as donors,” Dr. Callender expressed in Jet that education is the key to increasing the organ donor pool. “If you take the problem to the Black community and give them an opportunity to become sensitive and give them the knowledge to open the door…they will rally behind the issue.”