doctors could make their own devices and instruments and use them on patients with little outside oversight human experimentation committees whose approval is needed before doctors can conduct an experiment on a patient did not yet existall the progress we made in that period would take us a century now dr cooley said we would just try something in the lab have some personal conviction that it was a meaningful thing to do and try and then we would go ahead and apply itat his peak dr cooley was said to be the busiest heart surgeon in the united states performing many operations a day using an assemblyline approach patients were assigned to separate operating rooms where younger doctors opened their chests and exposed the hearts dr cooley then scurried between operating rooms to do the crucial part of each operation some of his critics have questioned the quality of the surgerymy athletic experiences taught me endurance and competitiveness with perhaps an emphasis on endurance he saidin 1984 president ronald reagan presented dr cooley with the presidential medal of freedom the nations highest civilian award for charting new territory in his search for ways to prolong and enrich human lifedr cooley had homes in houston and in galveston tex his wife of 67 years the louise thomas cooley died before him as did a daughter florence talbot cooleyhis survivors include four other daughters mary cooley craddock dr susan cooley dr louise cooley davis and helen cooley fraser 16 grandchildren and 17 greatgrandchildrendr cooley had his failures both professional a sheeptohuman experimental heart transplant was unsuccessful and personal he declared bankruptcy from failed real estate investments in the early 1980sand though he and dr debakey reconciled their rivalry never completely abated dr debakey has been called the greatest surgeon ever before his death in 2008 he said in an interview that dr cooley was one of the best cardiovascular surgeons he had ever knownasked in a separate interview whom he considered the greatest surgeon dr cooley replied besides myself