For years, Dorry Segev, Med '96 (MD), SPH '09 (PhD), a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, watched HIV-positive patients die waiting for a transplant while organs from HIV-positive donors were tossed aside. The outdated practice was the result of a ban passed in 1984, when AIDS was considered a death sentence. "It was incredibly frustrating because I knew that these people could be saved," he says. So Segev lobbied Congress and helped draft a bill overturning that legislation in 2013. Last year, he performed the nation's first HIV-to-HIV organ transplants—a liver and a kidney—with both recipients currently in good health.
Outside the operating room, Segev is a classically trained pianist, an avid photographer, and a champion swing dancer with wife Sommer Gentry. In 2005, the two created Charm City Swing to promote the dance form throughout Baltimore. Now, they're co-founders of the Mobtown Ballroom. "Continued engagement in the arts not only brings great joy to my life," says Segev, "it keeps me thinking creatively when it comes to medicine."
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Posted in University News, Voices+Opinion
Tagged surgery, dance, dorry segev
