On Apr. 23, 1981, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital announced they had for the first time successfully tested artificial skin — which fools the real human skin out of rejecting it — on 10 human patients.

Dr. John F. Burke, chief of the hospital’s burn unit, said the tests most likely saved the lives of three of the patients and greatly helped seven others.

Burke said in the past, in order to survive, patients with extensive burns needed ‘immunosuppresive’ drugs to prevent rejection of skin grafts. Such drugs also increase considerably the risk of infection.

The three patients were in ‘life-threatening’ conditions and had developed infections before hospitalization and therefore could not be immunosuppressed. Because the new man-made skin would not be rejected, it required no drugs.