Charles Richard Drew

• Born: June 3, 1904
• Birthplace: Washington, D.C.
• Died: April 1, 1950
• Place of death: Near Burlington, North Carolina

American physician and medical researcher

Drew developed a system of collecting and storing blood plasma in what is known as a blood bank, which was utilized for Allied fighting men in World War II. Whereas previously blood could be preserved for only about seven days, Drew’s method made it possible to store the plasma for much longer periods of time.

Primary field: Medicine and medical technology

Primary invention: Blood bank

Early Life

Charles Richard Drew was the first of five children born to Richard (a carpet layer) and Nora (a teacher) Drew. He was an exceptional student and athlete, earning four varsity letters in high school. Voted best overall athlete in both his junior and senior years, he graduated from Dunbar High School in 1922 with honors and a partial athletic scholarship to play football at Amherst College. As the scholarship paid only some of his expenses, he took a part-time job as a waiter. Between his athletic activities and his job, his grades suffered during his first two years of college but improved by his junior year. His athletic career continued to be outstanding. He was an all-American halfback and captain of the track team.

Upon graduation in 1926, Drew took a position at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. He wanted to become a doctor but was unable to pay for medical school at the time. He worked at Morgan, saved his money, and after two years resigned to enroll in the McGill University Medical School in Montreal, Canada. In 1933, he was awarded a medical degree and a master of surgery degree from McGill, where he had won first prize in physiological anatomy and two fellowships in medicine. From 1933 to 1935, he interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital and completed his residency at Montreal General Hospital. He returned to the United States to teach pathology at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C. In 1939, he married Minnie Lenore Robbins, with whom he had four children.

Life’s Work

Drew’s life work began in earnest after he earned his doctorate from Columbia University in 1940. He was a General Education Board fellow in surgery at Columbia from 1938 to 1940 and a resident in surgery at Presbyterian Hospital. His research on blood plasma and transfusions discussed methods for separating red blood cells from plasma to preserve them for later reconstitution and use. Conventional blood-preservation methods at the time focused on whole blood, which could be stored for only about seven days. Drew found that plasma could be stored much longer. In his two-hundred-page doctoral dissertation titled “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” he showed that blood could be preserved longer if the red blood cells were separated from the plasma and frozen separately. When a blood transfusion was needed, the separated elements could be reconstituted.

World War II was under way in Europe, and doctors needed blood supplies for wounded soldiers and civilians. Aware of Drew’s findings, one of Drew’s former teachers, then living in England, requested that he send ten thousand glass containers of dried plasma to England to be used in transfusions. This required an all-out effort to collect blood at New York hospitals for export to England. Because the United States might also soon be drawn into the war and need a large blood supply, Drew devised a new mass-production technique to separate the blood components and stockpile them.

British scientists were using modified cream separators to separate plasma from red blood cells, a system far more productive than spinning off the red cells using test tubes and centrifuges or simply allowing the cells to separate and settle apart from the plasma over a period of several days. Drew ordered two of the modified cream separators from England and, with his associates, constructed similar machines to mass-produce clear plasma from the whole blood being collected by the American Red Cross, American Red Cross and the National Research Council. This new system produced the volume of plasma likely to be needed when America went to war.

With war imminent, the American Red Cross named Drew director of its blood bank, and he was made assistant director of the National Research Council to manage blood collection for the American armed services in early 1941. Throughout the war, Drew’s collection and preservation process was used; mobile blood banks were used at the front lines to treat wounded soldiers and stabilize them sufficiently to get them to hospitals.

One negative development occurred when the military ordered that all collected blood be separated by the race of the donor. Drew and other scientists and medical professionals tried unsuccessfully to convince the military that there was no difference between the blood of black and white people. They argued that men could die unnecessarily while waiting to receive the “right” blood, but they could not persuade the military to change the policy, which remained in force through the war.

In May, 1941, when Drew resigned as director of the American Red Cross, it was rumored that he left in protest over the segregated blood issue. Years later, however, his widow denied this rumor, saying that he returned to Howard University because he missed working as a teacher and surgeon. That same year, he was made head of Howard University’s surgery department and chief surgeon at Freedman’s Hospital. By 1944, he had become chief of staff at the hospital, a position he held until 1948.

Drew received numerous awards and prestigious appointments for his exemplary career. Among them were honorary degrees from Virginia State College in 1945 and from his alma mater, Amherst College, in 1947. He held membership on the American Board of Surgery, the first African American to do so. In 1944, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for his outstanding achievements.

On April 1, 1950, while driving through North Carolina with a small group of students and colleagues to the annual meeting of the John A. Andrews Clinical Association in Tuskeegee, Alabama, Drew fell asleep at the wheel, and the car struck a soft shoulder and overturned. His injuries were the most serious: a closed head wound, a chest crushed by the steering wheel, and severe injuries to his arms and legs. He was taken to Alamance County General Hospital in nearby Burlington, where, according to urban legend, he was refused treatment because of his race. In fact, he received immediate care but was too badly injured to survive.

Impact

Drew was a pioneer in blood collection and plasma processing. His experimentation turned biological research into mass-production methods that resulted in a new way to produce large quantities of transfusible blood. His work saved the lives of thousands of World War II servicemen and servicewomen and created a system of blood transfusion that saved lives in other wars and calamities. He devised a quantitative procedure for separating blood cells from plasma and preserving the components for longer periods of time than had previously been possible. His blood bank was a revolutionary advancement in modern medical practice, and the American Red Cross blood program today is a direct result of his groundbreaking work in mass-producing human plasma.

Bibliography

Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970. Includes fourteen chapters on African American innovators, inventors, and scientists. The final chapter is devoted to Drew.

Hudson, Wade. Book of Black Heroes: Scientists, Healers, and Inventors. East Orange, N.J.: Just Us Books, 2003. Includes a short biographical sketch of Drew written for a juvenile audience.

Love, Spencie. One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. An extensively researched, insightful discussion of how rumors and opinions affect history, with focus on how Drew died, medical care and race relations in America at the time of his death, and some of the myths surrounding his death.

Schraff, Anne E. Dr. Charles Drew: Blood Bank Innovator. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 2003. Biography of Drew written for a juvenile audience.

Trice, Linda. Charles Drew: Pioneer of Blood Plasma. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Discusses Drew’s life and work as inventor of large-scale production of human plasma. Young adult reading level.