Masaharu Inami received a call in 1996 from a Nara doctor desperate to save the life of a 17-month-old girl who had fallen into a bathtub of boiling water and had been scalded over 65 percent of her body.
Inami was in Tokyo when the Feb. 8 call came in from a doctor at the Nara Emergency and Critical Care Medical Center.
"After assessing her burns," he said, "I thought cultured composite autograft technology was the only way to save her life."