Word: debakey
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Today's top-responsibility middle-ager might say with Shakespeare's Henry V at dawn of the Battle of Agincourt: "The day, my friends, and all things wait for me." Whether the hand holds the scalpel (Dr. Michael DeBakey, 57) or the baton (Leonard Bernstein, 48), it is watched by patient and public with rapt attention. Whether he is a Protestant evangelist (Billy Graham, 47) or a Catholic Archbishop (John Patrick Cody, 58, of Chicago, a U.S. cardinal-to-be), he lends spiritual guidance to attending multitudes. Whether he is a master of industry (Arjay Miller, 50, president...
...recoil at the inclusion of Dr. Michael DeBakey among latter-day hero physicians. He may be a hero to the medically unsophisticated press and public, but he is no hero to the medical community from which he has isolated himself. The medical profession has displayed its opprobrium with dignity by remaining silent about a man who thrives on noise...
...long been acknowledged, only Einstein among the pure scientists held a place in the U.S. consciousness until World War II. Today the roster would be long, studded with such names as Teller, Oppenheimer and Waksman. Another set of latter-day heroes are physicians, whose list would include Drs. Fleming, DeBakey, Salk and Paul Dudley White. Among businessmen, only Henry Ford has achieved anything like heroic dimensions, although such magnates as Astor and Carnegie were heroes to their day. The values of commerce, no matter how much they may accomplish, are the antithesis of the traditional values of glory...
...heart surgery performed by Dr. DeBakey et al. [April 29] was interesting and exciting. However, I believe that the play-by-play news releases went beyond the limits of medical ethics by violating the physician's obligation to keep his patient's problems and therapy to himself. Such experimental medical procedures, though a necessary part of medical advancement, should not be displayed to the public like a baseball game; the dignity of the patient and his family is too important to permit that...
...DeBakey concedes that a partial or even total artificial heart must be considered only a stopgap, until preventive measures against heart disease are perfected. But even if these were achieved tomorrow, he declares, "the present generation would require the benefits of a workable artificial heart." Such a device might save the lives of an estimated 300,000 U.S. heart-attack victims each year...