Wednesday, January 11, 2017

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 
Unpacking plasma in England (courtesy
National Library of Medicine)
participating hospitals, improved the separation techniques, created a completely closed system to pool the plasma (in a dust-proof, ultraviolet-lit room). To further avoid contamination merthiolate was added, and cultures done at every step. Results improved dramatically. In all, over 5,000 liters of plasma from over 14,000 donors were shipped abroad.
     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
Freedmen's Hospital, Washington DC
(courtesy National Library of Medicine)
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.
     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

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