Gold Book Donor to Shriners Burn Hospitals – Since the 1960s, when the Shrine opened its first three Shriners Hospitals dedicated to treating burns, a child's chance of surviving a severe burn has nearly doubled. From a time when a child with a burn over 50 percent of his body had only a 50 percent chance of surviving, today the benchmark is that a child with a 98 percent burn has a 50 percent chance of surviving. Of the major advances in the treatment of burned children in the last 20 years, fully half have been direct results of the activities at Shriners Hospitals. The Boston Hospital has been actively engaged in clinical and basic research since its opening. Its research findings have resulted in improved surgical treatment of the burn wound, the development of effective skin banks; better infection control; and alternative wound covering materials and strategies. One well-publicized achievement of the Boston Hospital is the cultured-cells technology pioneered by the Boston Hospital in collaboration with Harvard Medical School. Researchers developed a method of growing skin from a tiny sample of a burn patient's own skin. In 1982, in a celebrated case, the Boston Unit used cultured skin to save the lives of two boys who were burned over 97 percent of their body surface area. This represented the first-ever use of cultured skin in covering a massive burn wound. It was also the first time any human being had been known to survive such a severe burn injury.