Brooklyn mourns loss of Dr. Mike Avram
Pioneer in nephrology, civic philanthropist
Morrell Michael Avram, one of the first nephrologists and a pioneer of the use of artificial kidney dialysis, died peacefully at home on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023. He was 93.
A leader in the new field of nephrology, he made pathbreaking advances in the treatment of patients with diabetes and kidney failure through dialysis and kidney transplants. He was the first doctor to use the artificial kidney on diabetes patients and successfully to treat diabetics with renal failure. Dr. Avram was Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at SUNY Stony Brook University School of Medicine.
The formative experience of the Holocaust fueled his life of dedicated service and care. Dr. Avram was born in Bucharest, Romania on Nov. 11, 1929. From a middle-class Jewish family, his life was transformed in 1940, when Romania joined the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany. His U.S.-born mother, Rella, and sister, Liliana, were able to escape to America; he and his father, Mendel, unable to procure travel visas, found themselves trapped in a country with a long history of virulent antisemitism. Hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews were rounded up and massacred. Somehow, he and his father managed to escape capture by living in hiding for 6 years, sometimes together, sometimes apart. In 1946, at 16, he was able to join his mother and sister in New York City.