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Mason complemented his indoor life at the university with his great love of the outdoors. It was on a
canoe trip that he met his eventual life partner, Dordana Fairman, who at the time was a master’s
student in dietetics. Ironically, while Edward was treating patients with obesity, Dordana cared daily
for extremely lean patients with anorexia. They married in 1944, and the Mason family continued in
their outdoor tradition of camping trips in the north woods of Minnesota. The Mason dynasty
consists of three sons, one daughter, nine grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren [7].
Mason was a man with a high activity level, manifested by long, brisk walks and avid photographic
endeavors, and above all, swimming. As is often remarked, until the age of ninety-six, he swam a half
mile at noon every day in the Iowa university facilities; this distance translates to thirty-five laps in a
standard twenty-five-yard pool. During their later years, Dordana was his constant companion at
academic meetings. In 2015, after seventy-one years of marriage, Mason’s beloved life partner and
friend died [7]. When, in 2020, at the age of 100, Dr. Mason died, his ashes were interred with
Dordana’s in the Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City [8].
From its inception, MBS was opposed by the public as well as by many in medicine, although today
it represents an assortment of operative procedures that are among the most frequently performed.
Due to the modified Mason gastric bypass, which employs staplers [9] and a Roux limb [10,11], plus
the advocacy of the organizations founded by Dr. Mason, MBS has prevailed and expanded to
600,000-700,000 operations performed worldwide annually. Dr. Mason believed, presciently, that
acceptance and utilization of MBS in most western nations beyond the 1-2% of patients with class II
and III obesity was dependent on simplicity, and, thereby, increased safety with fewer complications
and side effects. Thus, he advocated against his own gastric bypass by introducing gastroplasty [4],
which avoided two (Roux-limb) anastomoses, or at least one (loop), anastomosis.

When various MBS investigators ascertained that the MBS enhancement of glucagon-like peptide-1
receptor agonist (GLP-1) secretion promoted resolution of type 2 diabetes and mitigation of obesity,
Dr. Mason was one of the first to draw attention to the isolation of GLP-1 in Gila monster venom, and
the potential of synthetic GLP-1 to complement MBS, or avert the need for it.
The sixty individuals that were drawn to Dr. Mason’s Gastric Bypass Workshop in Iowa in 1977
inaugurated the first MBS organization led by Dr. Mason in 1983. The now-named American Society
for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), in 2026, consists of nearly 5,000 dedicated members
from the US and Canada. Many accolades were bestowed on Dr. Mason during his lifetime, including
the Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Iowa, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from his
academic roots, the University of Minnesota. He received the ASMBS Foundation Outstanding
Achievement Award in 2005, and the prestigious Medallion for the Advancement of Surgical Care
from the American Surgical Association in 2013. He was immensely pleased to give the 26th ASMBS
Mason Lecture in 2014; few people are invited to give a coveted lecture named in their honor.
Numerous tributes to Dr. Mason appeared in various peer-reviewed journals including, in 2021, one
from Dr. Henry Buchwald, who proclaimed Dr. Mason the Father of Bariatric Surgery [8].

Dr. Mason remained intellectually active well into his late nineties. From drafting his 200
peer-reviewed articles and the publication of the first of five books, Computers in Medicine (1964),
through his last, A Fat Chance: A Surgical Paradigm of Obesity and Type-2 Diabetes, published
posthumously in 2021, Mason enjoyed the process of writing. In the last chapter of the
autobiography of his life and the history of MBS, Dr. Mason bids all of us farewell [7].

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