Record

Until a few weeks ago, being a hemophiliac never had seriously bothered 31-year-old Willie Cooke, a radio repairman in Four Oaks, N.C., despite intermittent hospitalization and transfusions for minor injuries. But when he had a tooth pulled early last month, intensive bleeding (20 to 25 pints a day) set in. At Duke University Hospital in Durham, doctors put him on the critical list, called for blood donors. As Willie grew weaker, an old gastric ulcer opened up, added to the blood loss. Clotting drugs (e.g., thrombin and Gelfoam) and antihemophilic globulin flown in from the Health Department in Lansing, Mich. failed to halt the drain. Moreover, antibodies built up from previous transfusions neutralized the clotting qualities of the newly transfused blood. Last week, after 442 hours of bleeding, Willie Cooke died, having taken a record 400 pints (232 of whole blood, 168 of plasma). Previous holder of the tragic record: Dallas' Hubert Harris (TIME, Jan. 24) who got 160 pints of whole blood before he died of internal bleeding.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.