From Blue to Pink

Few developments in surgery have had such public appeal as the "blue-baby" operation, first performed at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1944. Children born with malformed hearts look blue because their blood does not get enough oxygen. They cannot romp like normal youngsters; many of them cannot even walk across a room without huffing and puffing, and have to spend their waking hours in wheelchairs.

When Child Specialist Helen Taussig and Surgeon Alfred Blalock (after years of experiments on animals) worked out a solution to the blue-baby problem, their proposal looked daring indeed: to revamp the arteries close to the heart so that more blood is pumped to the lungs to get its full quota of oxygen. It worked. Within a year, 80 of the blue boys and blue girls operated on at Johns Hopkins went home a healthy pink, and were soon able to run and play as if nothing had ailed them. The children thus saved from crippling and early death now number thousands, and scores of surgeons are doing the operation.

But modest Surgeon Blalock. who speaks (in a soft Georgia drawl) as precisely as he operates, is the first to point out that the case of the blue baby is only one of many abnormalities of the heart, some innate, some acquired later in life, which challenge surgery. Ever since he succeeded, at the age of 41, to the prized chair of surgery at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Blalock has been attacking these problems in his study, in the laboratory, in the operating theater and the lecture hall. He is concentrating now on valves inside the heart itself.

A salaried staffman, Surgeon Blalock has no private patients, never sees a penny of the fees for his operations: all the money goes to the university. A painstaking administrator, he is also a crackerjack lecturer, wasting no words and never losing his temper. Only in the operating room when, with a heart exposed, life may be in the balance for hours, does Dr. Blalock's gentle voice betray his tension. As soon as possible after his work is done, he relaxes with chain-smoked cigarettes. Weekends, he fishes or plays golf (in the 80s, despite an unsurgeonly waggle to his swing).

Last week the A.M.A.'s House of Delegates voted to add the association's Distinguished Service Award, a citation anc medal, but no cash, to the lengthening list of honors given Surgeon Blalock, 54, for his efforts to help all victims of heart anc artery disorders, blue babies among them.

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