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SALT LAKE CITY — Though President Russell M. Nelson, prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needs no introduction, he deserves one, Gov. Gary Herbert said as he prepared to award the well-known church leader with the Governor’s Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Science and Technology Wednesday.
“We all know about his religious and humanitarian work, but we ought to remember and not forget his service in the medical and science field,” the governor said during the Utah Technology Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City.
While President Nelson is now most well-known for his time as an apostle and prophet of the LDS Church, he also performed Utah’s first open-heart surgery, first pediatric open-heart surgery and received numerous grants to continue advancing research that eventually established Utah as a leader in cardiac surgery.
President Nelson has performed more than 7,000 surgeries and helped develop the first heart-lung machine, making open-heart surgery possible. He and his first wife, Dantzel Nelson, also discovered a way to better oxygenate a patient’s blood during surgery.
“His focus on the heart came at a time when the dogma in medicine at the time was that if you touched the heart, it would stop,” Herbert said.
As President Nelson accepted his award, he recalled a conversation he had while at medical school about a quote from a then-renowned heart surgeon who said, “If one should ever presume to do an operation on the human heart, he would lose the respect of his professional colleagues.”
President Nelson contrasted that conversation with an experience he had with a group of University of Utah medical students to whom he was invited to speak not long ago. They asked him how he had discovered the techniques for turning a heart off and on again.
When he explained, one of the professors asked, “Well, what if it doesn’t work?”
President @NelsonRussellM receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at Utah Tech Innovation Summit #utahtechpic.twitter.com/0YP9nWh9mN
— Liesl Nielsen (@liesl_nielsen) June 6, 2018
“It always works — as according to divine law,” President Nelson said. “Every time you receive a blessing from God, it’s because of obedience to the law upon which that blessing is predicated. Scientific research is the discovery of what God’s laws are and then you can manipulate them and use them to your advantage.”
Herbert called President Nelson a "true innovator."
“We know of his love of people which he’s demonstrated in his commitment to training future surgeons and teaching them to be innovators throughout his medical career. He’s graced Utah with generations of talented cardiothoracic surgeons, which we are all the beneficiaries of. So today, we honor a true medical pioneer.”
President Nelson was one of four recipients who received Governor’s Medals for science and technology. Tyson Grover was honored for his work as the K-12 STEM director in the Davis School District; Dana Carroll was recognized for his pioneering work in precise genome engineering and George Hansen accepted an award for bringing science and technology jobs to Wasatch and Emery Counties.
