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CHAPTER TWO

The Pioneers
The Three Fathers - Mason, Scopinaro, Buchwald

Jane N. Buchwald, Francesco Saverio Papadia

Section 1: Father of Bariatric Surgery: Edward E. Mason, MD, PhD, FACS
Jane N. Buchwald

At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen, Chair of Surgery, suggested to young
Edward Mason during his residency, from 1949-1953, that he study a high gastric restriction
procedure to treat peptic ulcer disease. The operation was not successful in attaining that aim, but
Mason remembered that it caused marked weight loss. Mason may or may not have known about Dr.
Richard L. Varco’s first jejunoileal bypass (JIB) for obesity in 1953 [1]; however, he was certainly
familiar with the cardinal 1954 JIB paper by Kremen, Linner, and Nelson [2]. Indeed, Kremen
persuaded Mason to perform a JIB on two patients with weight gain after ventral hernia repair
dehiscence. The side effects of the JIB experience disenchanted Mason towards the operation.
When on staff at the University of Iowa, in 1963, Mason, in association with Dr. Chikashi Ito from
Japan, revolutionized metabolic bariatric surgery (MBS) by the introduction of gastric-reducing
surgery specifically for the management of severe obesity [3]. From 1973-1981, he introduced and
extended the concept of an anastomosis-free gastroplasty [4].

On the 28-29th of April, 1977, Mason organized the initial Gastric Bypass Workshop at the University
of Iowa; sixty people attended. Mason held the second meeting of the workshop on May 24-25,
1978, newly named the Bariatric Surgery Colloquium. In June of 1983, the group was renamed the
American Society for Bariatric Surgery (ASBS) with Dr. Mason its first President (1983-1985) [5]. In
1996, he founded the International Bariatric Surgery Registry [6]. Truly, Dr. Mason deserves
recognition as the “Father of Bariatric Surgery.”

Always precocious, Edward Mason was born on October 16, 1920 in a taxicab on the way to the
hospital in Boise, Idaho. His mother, Dora E. Mason, was a teacher and a talented sculptor; his father,
Edward F. Mason, a professor of photojournalism. Edward's genes and upbringing may have
invested him with manual dexterity, a love of academic research, and the capacity for creation and
communication. In 1929, the Masons moved from Idaho to Iowa City. In 1939, Edward entered the
University of Iowa for an accelerated education, having enlisted in the United States Navy. He
received his BA in 1943 and his MD in 1945. In 1945, Mason entered surgical internship at the
University of Minnesota followed by two years in the Navy at the Wadsworth Veterans Hospital in
Leavenworth, Kansas [7].

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