'I am writing to report that your procedure has been successful! Our baby boy was born and we couldn't be happier!'

-Jim and Janet-

'We thank God for your talent and skill in making our baby possible.'

-Doug and Deb-

'Thank you again - we now have a daughter and a son.'

-Carol and Ian-

'Our Twin daughters were born eight weeks ago. Without you we would be childless.'

-John and Katherine-

When our kids grow up we will be sure to let them know of the clever and special people who helped bring them into the world.

What others are saying?

"Dear Professor Owen,
As you can see, you have helped us to bring a lovely little lady into the world.
Yvette Irene is progressing very well. She is now nine weeks old, growing stronger everyday. Your exceptional work has been a great benefit to all of us and we thank you for it. Best Wishes"

"Dear Professor Owen,
Thank you for your skill and expertise that allowed us to start our family. Having Gavin is the most wonderful thing to ever happen to us. He is a wonderful baby.
All our love..."

"Dear Professor Owen,
Finally! Our son has arrived.
And it was all because of you and your efforts, Dr Owen, that this new great young man now walks the face of the earth. Words can never express our gratitude enough. We thank you.
You have brought incalculable joy into our lives by making it possible for us to bring forth a new life. We will never forget you."

He has been known to give lectures in verse. He designed the new (comfortable) chairs for the Sydney Opera House and the boardroom of John Fairfax. What he is seriously famous for is microsurgery - he was the first surgeon to sew back a child's finger (1970) and the first to reverse a vasectomy (1971) -and he has taught microsurgery to thousands of surgeons from all over the world. Now he has developed a laser/solder fusion technique that may make clips or even the tiny stitching of microsurgery obsolete.

Some of his colleagues see him as a publicity seeker but he rarely gives interviews. He knows the media to be dangerous allies. Twelve years ago, when he was attending a medical conference in the United States, a Sydney newspaper unknown to him, ran a story about the world-acclaimed pioneering work of Owen in microsurgery and Victor Chang in heart surgery. On his return to Australia, Owen was met at the airport by journalists asking him if it was true he was going to be struck off by the NSW Medical Board for breaching advertising codes. At the time he was already acknowledged as the world's leading microsurgeon; he was called before the board for a please-explain.
He is not a very tall poppy - of less than average height - but has enormous hands. They are covered in ginger freckles and take a size 9 glove, the largest size there is. He is ambidextrous, has blue eyes, less and less hair and the smile of a happy cherub. "I have a wonderful job," he says. "Most surgeons cut things out. I've been lucky in that I've had a career putting things back." He has reattached arms, legs, ears, scalps and penises as well as fingers and given 100 workshops in 30 different countries showing how to do it. Very accurate nerve repairs and nerve grafts now enable patients to recover from local paralysis. He can also put back a smile.

Coincidence: The workshops were necessary, he explains, because the rest of the world did not believe that what he was doing could be done. American surgeons did not start sewing back fingers or reversing vasectomies until four years after Australian surgeons. Owen's first workshop, in Sydney in 1969, took place on the day the astronauts landed on the moon. Television sets were switched on so that the surgeons could watch the landing. Fifteen years later Neil Armstrong chopped off his ring finger when it was caught in the automatic door of his garage. An American surgeon who had attended Owen's first microsurgery demonstration in New York in 1971 sewed it back on. "It was a lovely coincidence," he says.

His research team at the Microsurgery Centre in Sydney's Lane Cove leads the world in the study of minimally invasive nerve grafts and microlaser diagnostics - in which computers and fibre optics combine to produce a tiny probe that gives visual, three-dimensional images of internal tissues. This could lead to the elimination of the need for surgical biopsy. "Isn't that exciting?" says Owen. "Now we can diagnose without cutting." At the centre, work also continues on new operations for infertility. In one of the filing cabinets in Owen's rooms there are hundreds of photos of babies. Proud parents whose vasectomies or tubal sterilisations have been reversed (Owen has done more than 3000 vasectomy reversals) invariably send him a photo of the baby they thought they could never have.

The professor says surgeons should be working towards doing themselves out of a job and he sees a future in which robots and lasers take over from scalpel-wielding humans. Surgery, he says, is about anatomy and engineering. He works closely with Macquarie University, which doesn't have a medical
faculty and where he is a visiting professor to several Schools. "I'm a doctor but I'm swapping ideas with scientists and co-operating with physicists and engineers," he says.

Why is he not better known in his own country? "He's a maverick who likes to do things his own way," says a medical journalist who has written about him for overseas publications. However, he has been honoured around the world and one of his medals is real gold and so large it is jokingly referred to as the Big Mac.

Born into a well-known Sydney medical family - his father and his uncles were all doctors Owen was educated at Cranbrook School and Sydney University. He was always going to be a doctor. When he was five his father gave him a toy stethoscope and medical bag and took him on his rounds, introducing the little boy as his assistant.

But as well as playing with his stethoscope, Owen played the piano. His mother was a contralto who sang for the ABC and he used to accompany her on the piano. At 12 he was going to be a pianist as well as a surgeon; he won a national scholarship which entitled him to a year's tuition with Solomon, the British pianist who toured Australia for the ABC after the war. Solomon wisely said that Owen had to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a great pianist or a great surgeon but that he couldn't be both. Surgery won, with Owen paying his way through university by playing piano and drums in a band. When he operates it is always to a background of non-vocal classical music. "It makes me concentrate better," he says.

Music has remained a life-long interest and many of his friends are musicians, including Vladimir Ashkenazy and his 27-year-old son Dimka, a concert clarinetist. Dimka is also a former patient. When he was nine he was run over by a speedboat in the Aegean Sea off Greece. The propeller cut most of the tissue off his left leg from thigh to calf, and doctors recommended amputation. Vladimir had met Owen and knew of the work of his microsurgery team in Sydney. The boy was flown to Australia and in 10 hours of nerve graft surgery the structures of his leg were reconstructed. He recovered so well that only two years later he won his school's 100 metres race. Father and son have both performed thankyou concerts.

As he travels the world, Owen attends concerts wherever he goes. "I can always call in on a musician friend and get a good ticket at the last minute," he grins. He has designed the chairs for musicians in symphony orchestras. His pianist friends envy him the size of his paws - he can stretch three notes above an octave.

Fascinated: In his 20s, he went to England for postgraduate study and at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London became fascinated by the possibilities of operating to cure abnormalities in premature newborn babies. He developed special microinstruments and miniature stitches but what he badly needed was a double microscope with footpedals so that he and his
assistant could operate while looking through the microscope. "I was young and silly enough at the time to think that if you had a great idea people would want to help you. I went to the best people - Zeiss in Germany. No one had ever asked them to build such a special type of microscope before but they did it." It was the beginning of general clinical microsurgery.

He returned to Australia in 1970 and set up the Sydney Microsurgery Unit he was a children's surgeon by day and a microsurgeon by night - and the Microsearch Foundation was established three years later. "We exist on charity - on half a million dollars a year," he says.

The big corporations help and CSR, Boral, James Hardie Industries and Philips Electronics all contributed building materials for the unit's new headquarters on the Lane Cove industrial estate in Sydney's northern suburbs. The Commonwealth Bank has just contributed $94,000. The paintings on the walls are the work of an artist whose hands were saved by the microsurgeons.

As Microsearch director, Owen isn't paid a salary. "It's my baby and it's so rewarding and it's fun," he says. There is a paid staff of about five. It is the only independent surgical research unit in Australia.

In Sydney last week he was demonstrating his instruments for an SBS documentary series on Elegant Solutions. He is quite cross with himself for taking so long to realise that scissors could be built inside the needle-holder so that you didn't have to keep putting down one instrument to pick up the other.
As the little scissors emerge from inside the needle-holder he shakes his head and says "Why didn't I think of that 20 years ago?"

His hands are extraordinarily steady - very still and calm. When some of the knots he is tying on dummy tissue for the television camera refuse to behave, he shows no sign of irritability. "We will do that again," he says. The needle and thread he is using are many times finer than a human hair. In real life surgery he is known to say after hours of work, "That is not good enough - we will do it again." He has had the same surgical assistant, Dr Hari Kapila, for 19 years (he first teamed up with his brother-in-law Paul Lendvay, now a microsurgeon at Prince of Wales Hospital).

Ideas: "I work best under pressure. My wife says I'm so busy that I don't have time to actually think - I like doing things all the time. But I do think a lot - I think when I'm lying down and get great ideas when I'm unable to sleep. And I get ideas from looking and seeing - I look at things and say, 'That could be done better' and I have the opportunity to do it better." One of the reasons he runs an independent research outfit is that if he gets a good idea at 2am he is able to try it out very quickly. At a university the good idea might have to wait a year to get passed through committees and financed.

He has two grown-up sons - one a lawyer and one an architect - and two schoolgirl daughters. Despite a weekender in the mountains where he is trying to grow apples and where his wife grows vegetables and chickens run free - he is a great believer in a healthy diet he is by no means wealthy. He lives modestly and drives an unflash car. "Money has never been important," he says.

He has never patented the design of any of his instruments. However, the protein soldering material has been patented by Microsearch and Macquarie University. Perhaps it could help to pay the girls' school fees.

The Bulletin
February 4th 1997
Used with Permission