"It's according to divine law," President Nelson said of his work as a cardiothoracic surgeon. "I then learned indeed what I learned in Sunday School: Whenever you receive a blessing from God, it's because of obedience to the law upon which it is predicated."
When LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson entered medical school in 1948, operating on a live heart sounded like science fiction.
But the decorated heart surgeon said Wednesday that divine law, not science fiction, was the basis for the innovations that led Utah Gov. Gary Herbert to award him with the inaugural lifetime achievement governor's medal for science and technology.
"Scientific research is the discovery of what God's laws are," President Nelson said, "and then you can manipulate them and use them to your advantage."