Albert Lasker
Clinical Medical Research Award
C. Walton Lillehei
Morley Cohen
Herbert Warden
Richard Varco
Irving Selikoff
Walsh McDermott
Edward Robitzek
Carl Muschenheim
C. Walton Lillehei, Morley Cohen, Herbert Warden, and Richard Varco
For advances in cardiac surgery, making possible more direct and safer approaches to the heart.
In spite of bringing together the fruits of research in physiology, medicine and surgery, the correction of many defects in the circulatory system has been palliative in nature. To perform these procedures so as to restore the normal circulation of the patient has remained an unreached goal. The main obstacle has been the lack of a method which would allow surgery within the open heart under direct vision.
The brilliant and imaginative studies of Lillehei, Cohen, Warden, and Varco have clarified many of the problems of surgery within the heart by using a donor, a person whose circulation would supply oxygen and sustain the patient whose heart must be opened. These men showed that the oxygen requirements of the body are significantly less than previously believed. They also showed that the requirements of the heart are dramatically reduced when relieved of its pumping duties.
These discoveries made possible the consideration of simple and practical methods for bypassing the cardiac and pulmonary circulation. Thus, linking the circulatory systems of the patient and donor with the aid of a simple pump assures the patient of a continuous controllable supply of oxygenated and chemically balanced blood.
Already the cross-circulation technique has been successfully employed for the intra-cardiac correction of congenital malformations of the heart in several clinics.
Inevitably, improvements will be made in this method and new techniques will be developed as a result of the stimulus of this important work. It is now possible to envision curative surgery for the vast majority of congenital cardiac defects and improved techniques for the repair of acquired heart lesions.
Irving Selikoff, Walsh McDermott, Edward Robitzek, and Carl Muschenheim
For establishing the great efficacy of isoniazid drugs in the treatment of tuberculous meningitis and generalized miliary tuberculosis.
The discovery of the action of derivatives of isonicotinic acid against the growth of the tubercle bacillus was announced in the spring of 1952. The new day of treatment of tuberculosis had been heralded previously by the demonstration of the restraining effects of the sulfones and sulfonamides and was soon brightened by the discovery of even more active therapeutic agents. But the hydrazides of isonicotinic acid were soon found to surpass any other known substance in the degree of their specificity against the bacillus, their power to diminish its pathogenicity in experimental animals and their easy diffusibility through healthy and diseased tissues.
The shortcomings of some of these drugs (the thiosemicarbazones) because of their toxicity prompted the research staffs of two great manufacturers of drugs to search for other compounds of the same class. Isonicotinic acid hydrazide, selected as a starter of numerous syntheses, was found to be more promising than any other tested. Its strong antagonism toward turberculosis in animals, in some respects unique, was promptly demonstrated, and simultaneously its toxicity was shown to be relatively low.
Two groups of physicians followed immediately with clinical trials among tuberculosis patients. In a remarkably short period of time this cooperative endeavor established the great efficacy of isoniazid, its superiority over all other agents for the treatment of tuberculosis meningitis and generalized miliary tuberculosis and its suitability for prolonged therapy.
The discovery, now considered universally to be of the first order, has influenced the principles of treatment and control of tuberculosis profoundly. This contribution of the investigators distinguishes them as true scientists and humanitarians.