Malcolm David Orr

26 June 1939 – 3 December 2015

Professor Malcolm Orr was an exceptional physician, researcher, teacher and mentor. Born in Townsville of proud Scottish heritage, he was educated at the Industrial High School in Brisbane. He completed an interpolated research year in biochemistry in 1962, before graduating in medicine in 1964 from the University of Queensland.

Malcolm Orr was a student leader, president (from 1963 to 1964) and life member of the University of Queensland Medical Society. He served his residency at Brisbane Hospital and Brisbane Children’s Hospital. He completed a PhD at the Australian National University in enzyme metabolism, before embarking on a career in anaesthetics in the US under Professor Peter Safar at the Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh. It was in Pittsburgh, as a member of the Pittsburgh Live Steamers Club, that he further developed his great love of machinery and engineering. In 1978, he was appointed Associate Professor and Director of Cardiac Anesthesiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and in 1984, full Professor with tenure, a role that he held until retiring in 2012.

In his own private workshop in 1975, he invented a revolutionary blood salvage, washing and autotransfusion machine. From 1982, this invention and autologous blood transfusion was of crucial significance in the prevention of infection from HIV-infected blood. Between 1978 and 1988, he lectured extensively on the subject of blood salvage and autologous transfusion throughout the US and international circuits.

Malcolm helped mentor over 300 anaesthesia residents in Texas. He received many awards in the US for his research and service. Outside his domains of clinical and research medicine, Malcolm and his wife Jennifer created an international alliance for expatriate students in San Antonio, through which for more than three decades they mentored new undergraduate and postgraduate students arriving in Texas. For this altruism, in 2007, Malcolm and Jennifer received a Special Presidential Award for their service to the international alliance.

Malcolm is survived by Jennifer and their four children. As a medical and personal ambassador for Australia, his memory stands among the best.