DR. DREW AND
EARLY TRANSFUSION SERVICES
Careening through the streets of London in the fall
of 1940 were vans carrying a precious cargo – blood. The blitz was on and at
night the vans raced without lights, dodging debris and bomb craters almost by
instinct. The blood, all type O (universal donor), met London needs but was
difficult to store and transport in large quantities to the front.
The answer to these
problems was plasma – easy storage and no blood typing. John Elliot of North
Carolina was the first to study the use of plasma (1936). He convinced the American
Red Cross to consider it. In 1940 the Red Cross (that had a limited person-to
person transfusion service at the time) and the Blood Betterment Association of
New York (a larger blood donation service in New York and the first in the U.S.
- that used paid donors) jointly rolled out a program in New York called
“Plasma for Britain” to help England. The Red Cross rounded up donors, the
BBANY collected and processed the blood, and the Red Cross shipped it to
England. The program grew exponentially but technical problems developed, primarily
bacterial contamination. The Board needed a medical director to streamline the
processing and appointed Dr. Charles Richard Drew.
 |
| Charles Drew (courtesy National Library of Medicine) |
Dr. Drew was an African-American
born in 1906 in a middle class interracial community in Washington DC. He
attended Amherst College and was accepted at McGill University’s Medical School
where he excelled. After an internship and year of residency at McGill he
obtained a faculty position at Howard University Medical School, where he also
completed a surgical residency. His excellent work earned him a research
position at the surgery department of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, under
Allen Whipple. There he worked with John Scudder on fluid balance, shock, and
transfusion therapy. He also ventured into the new field of blood storage and
wrote a dissertation on “Banked Blood”. (The first “blood bank” in the world
was started at Cook County Hospital in Chicago in 1937 by Dr. Bernard Fantus,
who coined the name.) Drew was granted a Doctor of Science in Medicine degree
and then returned to Howard Univ. as a faculty member. He was called from there
in September, 1940, to be Medical Director of the program.
As Medical Director
Drew standardized blood collection procedures at
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| Unpacking plasma in England (courtesy National Library of Medicine) |
Drew also drew up a
detailed program for mass production of dried plasma, something already under
investigation by Sharp and Dohme Co. and others. After England opened their own
plasma facility the Red Cross set up a dried plasma program at Presbyterian
Hospital for the military, with Drew as assistant director. During this period
he introduced the use of mobile blood units (later called “bloodmobiles”).
 |
| Charles Drew with bloodmobile unit (courtesy National Library of Medicine) |
But the story
had its dark side. Racial segregation was still a fact in American life. The
scientists knew that blood from blacks and whites was the same, but transfusion
services were new and the public was less sure. The Plasma for Britain
directors made the political decision
to accept all donors but label the plasma as to origin. Not much later the
military, still rigidly segregated, decided to not collect African-American
blood at all, and the Red Cross acquiesced. But when African-American blood
donors were turned away after the Pearl Harbor bombing both the black and white
press expressed outrage, impelling the military to change their minds – partly.
All donors were accepted but the blood remained labeled and segregated.
Drew resigned from
the Red Cross job before his term was up to take over as chief of surgery at
Howard and be chief surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington’s only black
hospital. He said little of blood donor discrimination at the time but later
wrote and spoke about it more often. He faced other barriers. To be a member of
the AMA one had to join the local AMA chapter, an impossibility in the South.
Strong letters to Morris Fishbein, JAMA editor, had no effect. Drew was both
board certified and an examiner for the American Board of Surgery, but refused
membership in the American College of Surgeons for their prejudicial policies. He
spoke out on many other obstacles black physicians faced.
 |
| Freedmen's Hospital, Washington DC (courtesy National Library of Medicine) |
Every year Drew and
other African-American doctors gathered at a hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama to
man a free clinic for underprivileged blacks in the South. On April 1, 1950, he
and three colleagues set off by car at midnight from Washington. Reaching North
Carolina in early morning Drew was driving when the car ran off the road and
rolled over three times. Drew’s companions were not seriously injured, but Drew
was. He was taken to the nearest hospital but after two hours of intensive
efforts, he expired.
A tireless worker
(everyone commented on that), an agreeable, gregarious person, an author of 25
scientific papers, a gifted surgeon and teacher, a pioneer in the study of
transfusion and blood bank technology, an early spokesman for civil rights, and
the subject of a number of biographies, Charles Drew’s career tragically ended
much too soon.
SOURCES
Starr,
D: Blood. 1999.
Love,
S: One Blood: The Death and Resurrection
of Charles R. Drew.
1996.
Wynes,
C E: Charles Richard Drew: The Man and
the Myth. 1988.
Rutkow,
I M: “Charles Richard Drew”. JAMA
2000. v135: 1233.
Stetten,
D: “The Blood Plasma for Great Britain Project”. Bull NY Acad
Med. Jan, 1941. pp27-38.
Telischi,
M: “Evolution of Cook County Hospital Blood Bank”.
Transfusion, 1974. 14: 623-8.
U.S.
National Library of Medicine: “Profiles in Science: The Charles R.
Drew Papers” at
