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Peter Morrin was a nephrologist, medical ethicist, teacher and innovator. He was a Canadian pioneer in kidney dialysis, and in 1967 performed one of the first successful uses of blood purification or hemodialysis in Kingston, Ontario.
Peter was the son of two Dublin doctors - Francis Joseph Morrin, a surgeon and Eileen Mary Dowling, also a physician. They lived in Fitzwilliam Place in Dublin. Peter was the younger brother of Alice (Smyth) and older brother of Francis. He was among the first batch of students to enroll at St Conleth's College in Dublin.
He was at Ampleforth from September 1944 to July 1948, being in St Aidan's House under Fr Anthony Ainscough (OA1925, died 1988).
He studied medicine at University College, Dublin, between 1948 and 1954, graduating with a First. After a stint at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, he studied in Liverpool Royal Infirmary for a few months. He worked for two years at Boston City Hospital in Massachusetts. In 1958 he moved to Barnes Hospital at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri to do postgraduate work, and there became part of "a team that was among the first anywhere to achieve hemodialysis" [Canadian The Globe and Mail 2 November 2007]. In 1960 he was appointed acting director of the renal division at Barnes Hospital in St Louis.
For 35 years, from 1961 until his retirement in 1995, Peter worked in the Department of Medicine at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario in Canada. He started as a lecturer at Queen's in 1961 and rose to become a full professor in 1977.
He established a renal programme and nephrology division in the university. In 1967 the first renal unit under his direction was established at the university; this was further expanded under his direction in 1987 and 1990. It can now care for 350 patients requiring dialysis, as well as another 100 patients in seven satellite centres in eastern Ontario. His period of management of the renal unit led to dramatic changes, based very much on his work as a medical ethicist.
Peter Morrin was a specialist as a medical ethicist. From his early days at Queen's University there arose questions as to who could receive treatment and who would be denied treatment. To be refused was in effect to receive a death sentence. Equipment, chemicals and medical staff were in short supply. At this time, choices were made by committee: men might be chosen over women because men were breadwinners; only those between 15 and 45 were considered. Dr Morton, a professor of medicine at Queen's, spoke of Peter's approach: "Peter was a very fair man and worked on the basis that anyone who could benefit from the treatment should get it. He always struck the right ethical balance" [Toronto Globe and Mail 2 November 2007]. No longer did patients have to meet these stringent requirements.
His involvement in nephrology had been gradual. Although trained as a nephrologist, he was at first reluctant to be involved, believing that it should await properly trained staff and correct equipment. But a chance incident in 1967 changed this. A badly injured victim of a car accident needed urgent dialysis treatment if he was to survive, and they had a dusty unused machine at hand - the hours it took to get it fixed meant that the person died. But next time was different: a 21-year old man, who had lain un-noticed in a ditch for six hours after a car accident, was given dialysis treatment and survived. With a colleague, Fred Siemonsen, Peter developed the Kingmed Dialysis Machine, a modification of the Kolff dialyser. He was the author of many papers and articles in numerous publications.
In 1975-1976 he took a year's sabbatical, studying at the Institute of Nephrology in Paris. In 1990-1991, he took a second sabbatical as a Research Fellow in Bioethics at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Father Austin Rennick (monk of Ampleforth and then monk of St Louis), who taught Peter at Ampleforth and later moved to St. Louis, married Peter and Mariella in 1960, and later became the godfather of their eldest child. He was a dear family friend who visited the Morrins yearly until he passed away in 1991. Father Timothy Horner (C38, monk of Ampleforth and now of St Louis) assisted Father Austin in the marriage, and he remains a dear family friend of the Morrins. Peter and Mariella had three sons: Peter, Hugh and Robin.
Peter was a devoted family man much involved in the lives of his sons both as children and adults. He took up sailing, and his son Hugh represented Canada in the 1981 World Youth Championships in Portugal. Peter was a keen fly fisherman. All his life he retained the soft accent of educated Dublin, and he could mimic many other Irish accents - meeting an Irishman he could often pinpoint the county of his birth from his speech. In the words of a colleague, he "had a dry, Irish sense of delivery that he added to his most stately comments". His son Hugh says that he "was an Irishman with a twinkle in his eye" He adds: "My father had a wonderful sense of humour. He was a fabulous storyteller to us as children and later to his grandchildren". He was a keen skier, and in December 2006 he took a course to be a ski instructor - perhaps the oldest person to take the course. He had been a keen rugby player, earning his colours at Ampleforth and playing at University College, Dublin.
He died on 3 October 2007 at Kingston, Ontario, Canada, of injuries suffered in a head-on car accident that occurred while on his way home from a day spent fly fishing.
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Peter's son, Hugh, is working on a web site to honour his father, and has posted various tributes, articles and photographs that may be of interest to friends and former students of Ampleforth.
www.morrins.ca
OA Deaths 2007
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