Whom to Save?

Because San Francisco's Children's Hospital has only one Drinker Respirator, its staff last week was obliged to make a character-testing decision. The Drinker Respirator, invented by Dr. Philip Drinker of the Harvard School of Public Health, is a mechanical aid to breathing. It is a large casket into which the body of a patient with respiratory paralysis can be inserted. His head extends into the open air. A motor creates a vacuum in the respirator causing the chest to expand. Consequently stimulating oxygen and carbon dioxide may be sucked into the patient's lungs. When the respirator's vacuum is filled with air, the patient's lungs collapse, expelling their vitiated gases. Persistent repetition of this process often sustains the patient until his lungs regain their normal power. Last week Irving S. Johnston, 25, victim of infantile paralysis, was in the Children's Hospital solitary Drinker Respirator. Appeared Miss May Jean McCullough, 30, similarly paralyzed by infantile paralysis, also bound to die without the respirator's aid. Whom to save, the woman or the man? Dr. Edward Byer Shaw, in charge of the machine was appalled. He called a conference of other staff men. Social custom said: save the woman. Common sense said: Save the man-- married, father of a 14 month-old son. Biology said: save the potential mother. Patient Johnston said from the machine: "Take me out. Give her a chance." Patient McCullough said: "I'm ready to die. I'll probably be crippled for life anyway." Medicine said, and that is what Dr. Shaw's colleagues heeded: We have the man's case under control. He will probably live. We cannot foretell the result of the woman's case. It is not a case of one life or the other. Save the man.

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