Gerald B. Appel
Gerald B. Appel (born 1947) is an American physician and kidney researcher known both for his celebrity patients and for his scholarly work on the renal manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosis. He is also the world's foremost authority on diseases of the glomerulus, having published more than one hundred academic papers on the subject. Appel is currently Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Nephrology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, where he also runs the Center for Glomerular Diseases, the nation's largest institute for research into the treatment of intrinsic diseases of the kidney. The National Kidney Foundation awarded Appel its lifetime achievement award in 2005, naming him "the foremost academic nephrologist of the past twenty-five years."[1]
Appel gained widespread recognition during the early 2000s for his role in securing a kidney transplant for professional basketball player Alonzo Mourning and for enabling Mourning to return to the court for an NBA championship.[2] However, Appel had previously treated numerous other celebrities, including a dying Charles Lindbergh in the mid-1970s, and Chicago White Sox co-owner Eddie Einhorn at the time of that team's World Series victory in 2005. [3] He has attempted to capitalize on this celebrity by writing about kidney disease for the lay public, most notably in Positive Approaches to Living with End Stage Renal Disease (1986) with celebrity transplant surgeon Mark A. Hardy.
