In February 1964 Roberto Gilbert Elizalde, a Mayo Clinic–trained surgeon in Guayaquil, Ecuador, found the ideal candidate for a radical procedure being developed in his laboratory. Julio Luna was a 28-year-old sailor who had lost his right hand in a grenade explosion. Gilbert Elizalde, inspired by the successful transplantation of a kidney harvested from a cadaver in the U.S., intended to replace Luna’s missing appendage with a donor’s.

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