The longtime feud and resulting intense competition between Houston cardiovascular surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley was a part of what catapulted Houston’s Texas Medical Center into the upper tier of the world’s great medical centers over the past 40 years.
Now, the Chronicle’s fine Texas Medical Center reporter, Todd Ackerman, reports in this article that the DeBakey-Cooley rift is no more:

It’s considered one of medicine’s best-known feuds: two brilliant and egotistical doctors on the frontiers of cardiovascular surgery, whose falling-out divided a community and became the stuff of legend.
Immortalized in a Life magazine cover story, the rift persisted for decades. Although the competition spurred them to achievements that transformed the Texas Medical Center into the world’s heart treatment center, the former collaborators avoided each other and barely spoke.
But recently, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley buried the hatchet.
“I’m glad the rivalry may have passed by,” Cooley said on Oct. 27, presenting DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award at a meeting of Cooley’s Cardiovascular Surgical Society. “I hope this is not just a temporary truce or cease-fire (but) … a permanent treaty between us.”
DeBakey, 99, responded that he was glad to be there for two reasons: “One is, I’m alive. And the other, of course, is to get this award. Denton, I am really touched by it.”

Read the entire article.