Doctor who helped separate conjoined twins speaks at UC Irvine

UCI CAMPUS — James Goodrich can vividly remember the moment a TV crew stopped by the hospital to film the conjoined twins that he had just helped separate. His team had successfully operated on Carl and Clarence Aguirre, a pair of 2-year-old Filipino twins, and the filmmakers were keen on capturing the excitement.

But there wasn’t much to capture.

“They both looked at each other and went back to sleep,” Goodrich told the audience during a lecture Friday at his alma mater. “There was no Hollywood moment that day.”

But Goodrich, who had labored for months to give the twins a normal life, couldn’t have been happier. Since being separated, he said, Carl and Clarence had learned to sit up, ride tricycles and do other things most toddlers do, thanks to modern medicine.

Goodrich, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences at UCI in 1974, won worldwide acclaim for his 2004 operation on the Aguirres. On Friday, the day after UCI presented him with its Distinguished Alumnus award, he addressed a crowd of three dozen in the campus Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Professor James McGaugh, who taught Goodrich during the 1970s, made the opening and closing remarks. Afterward, he said that one of his happiest moments had been turning on CNN and seeing an item about Goodrich operating on the twins.

“I’m delighted that he learned most of this right here at UCI,” McGaugh joked. “We’re proud of that.”