Jewish Invention Myths: The Stent
I’ve sometimes seen it claimed that jews invented the stent used in cardiology to hold arteries open to allow blood to flow freely and indeed jews often imply they are central to the development of the stent (1) but this is simply nonsense as we shall see.
Now in the first instance the term ‘stent’ derives from a prominent nineteenth century English dentist named Charles Thomas Stent who created (and then manufactured) the material that stents were originally made of, which was then adopted by medical doctors and surgeons for wider use in medicine proper rather than just dentistry. (2)
The claim comes the misnomer that the first stent was invented by Julio Palmaz and Richard Schatz in the United States in 1985.
As Tzvee Zahavy writes:
‘The coronary stent was invented by Julio Palmaz. The stainless steel, insertable mesh stent is expanded once inside the body to hold an artery open and allow blood to flow more freely. Palmaz secured funding for the development of the stent from restaurant owner Phil Romano (Fuddruckers and The Macaroni Grill). Palmaz co-developed the stent with Dr. Richard Schatz, a cardiologist at the time at the Brooke Army Medical Center. We would guess that Schatz is Jewish. They patented their invention in 1985.’ (3)
There are several problems with this narrative in that Julio Palmaz – an Argentine doctor sometimes claimed to be jewish on apparently no evidence whatsoever – invented and successfully patented the balloon stent for cardiology in 1985 and only then did Richard Schatz get involved with Palmaz invented but sufficiently so for it to be called the Palmaz-Schatz Stent.
The issue with this is that I did some digging into Schatz’s background and while the name is a common Ashkenazi jewish one; it is also a common German one (from Bavarian no less). (4) Further Schatz has actually stated his mother was a Sicilian – from a village just south of Palmero – and while he doesn’t stipulate his father’s origins the fact that his father was admitted to West Point after the Second World War (5) suggests he was actually of German not jewish origins given that West Point was home to a hard-line American nationalism as well as at times strident anti-Semitism at the time and jewish cadets at West Point were rare and ‘soon eliminated’ from the programs. (6)
Nor – with the risk of appealing to the treacherous area of physiognomy – does Schatz look jewish in my opinion. (7) Indeed, the basis for Palmaz-Schatz Stent itself was the work of Palmaz’s mentor former Luftwaffe doctor Andreas Gruentzig. (8)
However, the first stent for cardiology was not in fact invented by Julio Palmaz and Richard Schatz in 1985 but rather was patented by an American doctor of Hungarian German ancestry Robert Ersek in 1972. (9) The concept and idea behind Stenting however is even older than that and was first described as ‘dottering’ by American doctors Charles Dotter and Melvin Judkins in the journal ‘Circulation’ in 1964. (10)
Indeed, as Ariel Roguin explains in his 2011 article for ‘Circulation’:
‘The first coronary stent was implanted into a patient by Jacques Puel in Toulouse, France, on March 28, 1986
Ulrich Sigwart has been credited with the concept and realization of endoluminal stenting, a procedure that has revolutionized coronary and peripheral arterial revascularization.’ (11)
And:
‘Sigwart worked at the University Hospital, Lausanne, Switzerland (1979 to 1989), and played a pivotal role in the concept and ultimate application of coronary stenting.’ (12)
So put another way the first stent was created by Robert Ersek in 1972 not by Julio Palmaz in 1985 and both of whom based their inventions on the work of other non-jewish doctors (Charles Dotter, Melvin Judkins and Andreas Gruentzig respectively) and Richard Schatz – Palmaz’s later co-developed to the Palmaz-Schatz Stent – isn’t/wasn’t in fact jewish despite jews claiming that he is/was.
So no jews most certainly did not invent the stent!
References
(1) For example: https://www.tctmd.com/news/israeli-innovations-include-cath-lab-future-stent-and-digital-developments and https://tzvee.blogspot.com/2014/04/are-coronary-stents-kosher.html
(2) https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circinterventions.110.960872
(3) https://tzvee.blogspot.com/2014/04/are-coronary-stents-kosher.html
(4) https://www.ancestry.com/last-name-meaning/schatz
(5) https://www.medscape.com/editorial/series/1532059
(6) Joseph Bendersky, 2000, ‘The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army’, 1st Edition, Basic Books: New York, pp. 5-6; 14; 38; 210-211
(7) https://www.invent.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/2025-Fact-Sheet-Schatz_final.pdf
(8) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4671350/
(9) https://csy-ip.com/the-historic-patent-story-of-the-stent/
(10) https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circinterventions.110.960872
(11) Ibid.
(12) Ibid.