Johns Hopkins’ Pioneering Cardiac Surgeon Reflects on Lifetime of Service - Higher Education: It’s been three decades since Dr. Levi Watkins Jr. made medical history when he stopped the heart of a California woman just long enough to perform the first human implantation of the automatic defibrillator. Watkins, who is African-American, finds it “ironic,” even today, that “women and African-Americans are 30 to 40 percent less likely to get a defibrillator even when they meet the criteria and have the insurance.”
When the idea came to him three decades ago, Watkins told Johns Hopkins Hospital officials that the institution “needed a King program” to mark the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. each January. Watkins, who orchestrates the popular event and hand picks each star-studded guest speaker, says it’s probably one of the few times at the hospital when janitors, medical students, cafeteria cooks, executives and nurses can “sit down together in one auditorium in the name of humanity.”
