He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1944 and had his first real taste of saving lives in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1946 to '47.  Dr. Weil earned an M.D. degree in 1952 from State University, Downstate Medical Center of New York.  After a stint on the cardiology unit at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the 31-year-old physician moved to California, where he met his future co-researcher, the late Dr. Herbert S. Shubin. 

In 1958 at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, the two cardiologists wondered why many patients died -- often at night -- while recovering from a heart attack, serious illness or surgery. They discovered that without a way to check vital signs continually, nurses often weren't aware their patients were slipping away. Monitoring blood pressure, pulse, breathing and other vital signs moment by moment would give staff a chance to intervene with lifesaving care. That insight laid the foundation of the "critical care" concept. The four-bed "Shock Ward" Drs. Weil and Shubin developed at LA County General was the first of its kind. It evolved within a decade into 42-bed Center for the Critically Ill at USC, becoming a model for today's intensive care, coronary care, trauma and post-operative care units.

Begun in 1961 as a joint project of the departments of medicine and surgery at USC, Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine incorporated as an independent, nonprofit organization in 1975. That same year, Dr. Shubin died at age 50 of a heart attack while mountain climbing near Lake Mammoth. "His death had a profound impact on my life," Dr. Weil said. "This prompted a very strong commitment to understand better how to save lives after the heart stops." Dr. Weil transferred much of the Institute's activities to the Midwest when he became chief of medicine at Chicago Medical School in 1980. Eleven years later, he began consolidating the Los Angeles and Chicago programs in Palm Springs, completing the transfer in 1994.

Over the following decade, an impressive array of technology poured from institute laboratories for monitoring and dealing with life-threatening circulatory shock, heart failure, acute lung failure and infections. The most recent breakthrough was a drug, announced in November, for reducing heart failure following successful CPR. Studies showed levosimendan greatly improved survival rates from impaired cardiac function that often follows resuscitation, according to lab director Dr. Shijie Sun.  Breakthroughs include chest compressor, resuscitation blanket and bone marrow stem cells for repairing the brain and heart damage after cardiac arrest.

In conjunction with the opening of the new Institute building named in honor of Joe, Corinne and Peter Solomon, the trustees added the name of Dr. Weil to that of the Institute, designating it as the Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine.

Works in Progress

The Rancho Mirage facility serves as a site for training, for service to the community, for laboratory research and biomedical engineering. The ground level houses administrative areas, including Dr. Weil's corner office. A storage room off a training/conference center is piled high with adult and infant mannequins for CPR instruction. "One of our most exciting community projects is to train the next generation ... and update all paramedics in new guidelines for CPR," said Carlos Castillo, a research biomedical engineer from Venezuela. The second floor houses a library with offices for visiting scientists, along with an engineering lab and work stations for research fellows from the United States and abroad. Cluttered lab benches devoted to design and testing of instrumentation and mechanical devices fill the cavernous room.

Under the director of Professor Bisera is the invention of the cardiac arrest detector. It allows the lay rescuer to rapidly detect the absence of a pulse and need four chest compression and possibly electrical defibrillation. These effects have allowed for implementing uninterrupted chest compression, the most life saving of all interventions together with defibrillators. Dr. Shijie Sun explained that a basement laboratory allows for development of new drugs in addition to stem cells in part of collaboration with Sun Yat-sen University in China. 

The Institute Scientists devote their effort to both medical biology and technology in an effort to keep damaged organs functioning after injury, and especially after heart stoppage.

"The ultimate promise is an capability to grow a biological heart and other organs," said Dr. Wanchun Tang, CEO, Professor and Chief Scientific Officer. He further stated "Someday this may overcome limited availability of donor organs."