Word: kevorkian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What made this otherwise routine case remarkable was that the donor was a dead boy of twelve, who had drowned in a nearby lake. After all attempts to revive him had failed, Pathologists Jack Kevorkian and Glenn W. Bylsma did an autopsy and withdrew two pints from a jugular vein. This was 2½ to 3 hours after death. To make sure that no germs had got into the blood (which would make it unsafe for transfusion), samples were incubated for two weeks. The woman patient had no unfavorable reactions to the transfusions of cadaver blood, is now well...
Pathological Prejudice. This was the fourth time that Drs. Kevorkian and Bylsma had supplied cadaver blood for transfusion. In three previous cases the attending physicians tried it cautiously, and only on incurable patients. Yet using cadaver blood is not a new practice. At Moscow's Sklifosovsky Institute, almost 30 tons of it have been given in 30,000 transfusions since the method was first tried there in 1930. U.S. doctors have shied away from it because of prejudice against contact with anything taken from a corpse. The Pontiac pathologists hoped that this prejudice was weakening with wider acceptance...
Safety Rules. Drs. Kevorkian and Bylsma thought that they were applying the Russian method for the first time in the U.S. Then they learned, from a recent Bulletin of the American Association of Blood Banks, that as long ago as 1935 Surgeon Leonard L. Charpier had used a similar technique in a Chicago suburb. Dr. Charpier kept the work secret and died without writing up his records. But he was responsible for about 35 cadaver-blood transfusions in two years. Then the modern system of blood banking, which permits blood to be stored for three weeks without deterioration, was developed...