WASHINGTON -- There have been many awards in the long and illustrious career of transplant innovator Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, and yesterday at the White House he received the nation's highest honor in his field -- the Medal of Science.

	Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Associated Press President Bush presents the National Medal of Science -- the nation's highest scientific honor -- to Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, left, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine during a White House ceremony today. Click photo for larger image.

Dr. Starzl continued to wear the medal, which President Bush draped around his neck with a red, white and blue lanyard, all the way back on a long walk to his hotel where he celebrated with his wife, Joy, over an Irish coffee before heading to an evening gala at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

"Normally the awards are anxiety-producing [but] they had this organized in such a way that it was not," said Dr. Starzl. He said he appreciated the ceremony's simplicity and was relieved that he didn't have to give a speech. "The fact that it's nonpolitical and it's from the great body of science -- it was a special award."

The president presented the gold medal to Dr. Starzl and seven other science laureates yesterday in the gilded East Room of the White House in front of an audience of friends, family, and young science and technology scholars. Seven recipients of the national medal of technology were also honored, including "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, whose company, Industrial Light and Magic, received the award for visual effects technology in the film industry.

"People generally do not pursue a career in science or technology with the goal of fame. I'm kind of trying to change that today," President Bush said before presenting the medals. "The work of discovery is quiet and often solitary. Yet all Americans benefit from your imagination and your talent and your resolve. And so today we're here to say thanks for what you've done; thanks for helping improve the quality of life in this country; thanks for inspiring others."

Dr. Starzl, who is now director emeritus of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, performed the world's first successful liver transplant in 1967 while he was at the University of Colorado. He went on to train many of the world's earliest transplant surgeons while in Colorado and at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which he joined in 1981 -- significantly boosting the institution's prestige.

From the beginning of his career to the present, his research has focused on developing anti-rejection medicines that have helped transplant patients live for decades. It was his innovations with the more efficient anti-rejection drug cyclosporine, in combination with steroids, that vastly improved the success rate of transplants in the early 1980s, helping to make them a common practice.

But Dr. Starzl's focus in the last decade has been on increasing patients' tolerance for their transplant organs without the rigorous regimen of immunosuppressants that were once considered necessary to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.

His work in recent years has stemmed from his team's discovery in 1992 that some of the cells from transplant donors essentially co-existed with the cells of the transplant recipients many years after their transplants had taken place. The discovery opened a new chapter for Dr. Starzl by helping to explain the mystery of how organs could be transplanted without being rejected.

"Once you understand the mechanism, you start playing around with the mechanism and that's what we're doing," he said. The goal is "to improve the life of the [transplant recipient], but the important thing is to try to get patients either on very small doses of drugs or to get them off altogether."

Dr. Starzl said yesterday that he and his colleagues are nearing a critical breakthrough in eliminating their patients' dependency on anti-rejection drugs entirely.

"I think we're pretty close," he said yesterday. "I think what we're looking at is a big revolution."

The shortage of organs for transplants around the world has also spurred Dr. Starzl to continue his work on xenotransplantation -- the process of transplanting organs from animals such as pigs into humans.

"At this time, the ceiling on further development on transplantation really is the shortage of organs and there are three ways out of the shortage of organs," Dr. Starzl said, ticking off animal-to-human transplants, artificial organs and stem cell research. "Xenotransplantion is the one that is most proximate. ... If you could just defeat the immune barrier, you're there, and that would revolutionize the field."

Though the idea of making animal organs available for human use has ignited fiery ethical and philosophical debates, particularly among animal rights groups, Dr. Starzl said he believes that if the procedure actually worked, public concerns would dissolve.

Though Dr. Starzl, who is 79, tried to scale back his work for health reasons, both he and his wife admit that hasn't happened.

"I spend as much time and I get one-tenth as much done," he said.

"We're both workaholics," said Mrs. Starzl, who counsels seniors in underprivileged parts of Pittsburgh.

They had long planned to spend more vacation time in a house they bought in Austin, Texas; Dr. Starzl even reminisced about a favorite Texas barbecue spot with the president yesterday.

But both Dr. Starzl and his wife found it difficult to break away from their work in Pittsburgh and said they drew enough solace and relaxation from being together. So they sold the Texas house. When asked how long they planned to stay in Pittsburgh, Dr. Starzl laughed.

"Well I'm planning to be buried there," he quipped, "either that or blown to the winds."