Helen Brooke Taussig

Physician

  • Born: May 24, 1898
  • Birthplace: Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Died: May 20, 1986
  • Place of death: Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

American pediatric surgeon

Regarded as the founder of the specialty of pediatric cardiology, the study and treatment of children’s heart disorders, Taussig and colleagues originated a surgical procedure for infants who suffered from the otherwise fatal disease, “blue baby” syndrome. Taussig also was influential in banning the sedative drug thalidomide in the United States, thereby averting the birth of thousands of infants with disorders caused by the use of the drug by pregnant women.

Areas of achievement Medicine, physiology, science, public health

Early Life

Helen Brooke Taussig (TOW-sihg) was the youngest of four children of Frank W. Taussig, a distinguished economist on the faculty of Harvard University, and Edith Thomas Guild Taussig, one of the first students to graduate from Radcliffe College. Her grandfather, William Taussig, was born in Prague and migrated in 1840 to the United States, where he became a physician and later a prominent businessman in St. Louis, Missouri. He is believed to have been the role model for his granddaughter’s choice of medicine as her life’s work.

Taussig was a sickly child and often absent from school. Her early years were marred by dyslexia, a reading disability, and reading remained difficult for her throughout her life. She told an interviewer that she still could not read six telephone numbers without reversing at least one of them, but her father patiently worked with her to overcome her reading disability. (Her mother had died of tuberculosis when Taussig was eleven years old.) As a child, she also suffered a significant loss of hearing, probably as the result of whooping cough.

Taussig graduated from the Cambridge School for Girls in 1917. She studied at Radcliffe for two years and then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, to gain experience living away from home. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1922. When she learned that women were not permitted to be degree candidates at the Harvard School of Public Health, she enrolled at the Harvard Medical School in a course that dealt with the structure of animal and plant issues. She then studied anatomy at the Boston University Medical School before receiving her M.D. in 1927 from Johns Hopkins University, one of the few medical schools at the time that admitted women.

After graduation, Taussig was appointed to a year’s term as a fellow in cardiology at Johns Hopkins, followed by a two-year pediatrics internship. By then she had learned to lip read and to use her fingers rather than a stethoscope to monitor her patients’ heart beats.

In 1930, Taussig was appointed physician-in-charge of the Pediatric Cardiac Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a position she held until her retirement in 1963. She never married, but she regarded her patients and their parents as part of her extended family.

Life’s Work

At Johns Hopkins, Taussig collaborated with two colleagues to develop a surgical procedure to treat babies who suffered from “blue baby” syndrome, or cyanosis, most often caused by congenital malformations of the heart and associated vessels. With such a condition, circulation to the lungs and other parts of the body is less than normal. One such condition is known as tetralogy of Fallot (named for Étienne-Louis Fallot, a French physician who had described the condition in 1888). The associated abnormalities result in poor oxygenation of blood (anoxemia), which leads to symptoms that include blue lips and finger tips and shortness of breath. About three of every four cases of blue baby syndrome resulted from hereditary abnormalities, with the remainder caused by birth disorders. Babies suffering from the disorder were regarded as untreatable.

Taussig collaborated with surgeon Alfred Blalock and with surgical laboratory technician Vivien Thomas to develop a surgical technique to cure blue babies. Thomas was an African American who had never gone beyond one semester of college, but he teamed up with Blalock at Vanderbilt University, where Thomas was employed as a master technician. Blalock and Thomas, prompted by Taussig, developed a procedure to bring more blood to the hearts of blue babies. Thomas first tested the process on about two hundred dogs to ensure the procedure would not produce harmful side effects.

On November 29, 1944, the surgical team performed its first operation on a fifteen-month-old infant, who weighed only ten pounds and was suffering from tetralogy of Fallot. Within nine weeks, Blalock and Taussig performed two more operations and reported their results in the May 19, 1945, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. By December 30, 1950, 1,037 patients had undergone the operation, which came to be called the Blalock-Taussig Shunt. The procedure had a mortality rate of less than 5 percent.

Some years later, Taussig and colleagues responded to protests made before the Baltimore City Council that objected to the use of animals for medical experiments. Taussig appeared at the council meeting accompanied by former blue babies, many of whom would have been dead except for the procedure, a medical breakthrough made possible because of successful animal experimentation. The city’s voters later defeated a referendum to ban animal experimentation in the city by a margin of 4-1.

Later, Taussig was a key figure in the scientific debate that resulted in banning the sale of the drug thalidomide, a sedative, in the United States. Thalidomide had been developed in Switzerland and introduced into West Germany in 1957 under the trade name Contergan. German pharmaceutical company Chemie Grünenthal marketed the drug vigorously, emphasizing its safety. By 1959 there were an estimated one million Germans taking the drug on a daily basis. As Taussig would put it, the drug had become “West Germany’s baby sitter” because it was a particularly effective sleeping pill. It took time to realize that thalidomide, when taken between the twentieth and fortieth day of pregnancy, could cause severe disorders in fetuses, leading to newborns with conditions that included “flipperlike” appendages in place of normal limbs. Ultimately, 2,866 West German families would receive financial compensation for birth disorders caused by thalidomide.

In September, 1960, American drug company Richardson-Merrell had filed a new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), seeking approval to market thalidomide in the United States. In 1962, Taussig traveled to Germany to see for herself the drug’s effects. Upon her return she presented her findings to a congressional committee, highlighted by photographs of disabled and “deformed” babies in Germany. She was instrumental in supporting Frances Kelsey, a pharmacologist and FDA medical officer who prevented the drug’s approval for use in the United States. Richardson-Merrell would withdraw its FDA application in March, 1962.

Taussig received numerous honors for her work in pediatrics. In 1954 she shared the highly prestigious Albert Lasker Medical Research Award with Blalock and Robert E. Gross, a Harvard Medical School surgeon, for outstanding contributions to medicine. In 1944, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Heart Association. For her efforts in the thalidomide case, U.S. president John F. Kennedy awarded her the Gold Medal for Distinguished Federal Service, and in 1961, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian award. In 1970 she received the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, given to women whose lives exemplify outstanding service to humanity. She also received seventeen honorary doctorates, including awards from Harvard, Columbia, and Duke, and numerous honors from European countries.

Taussig died in an automobile accident on May 20, 1986, only four days before her eighty-eighth birthday. Her car had been hit broadside by another vehicle as she was backing out of a driveway in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

Significance

Taussig was the world’s foremost pediatric cardiologist. The Blalock-Taussig Shunt, which she developed with cardiac surgeon Blalock, has saved thousands of lives and helped to revolutionize open-heart surgery. That the operation remains in use is testimony to its impact on medical science. The procedure remains widely used because it can be performed on the very young, who are too small for open-heart surgery. Taussig’s work to highlight the dangers of thalidomide led to the FDA refusing to approve the drug’s distribution and use in the United States. Finally, Taussig’s legacy includes her career as a female surgeon in a field dominated by men. She also inspired others who live with disabilities to excel in their chosen field by developing skills of compensation.

Bibliography

Baldwin, Joyce. To Heal the Heart of a Child: Helen Taussig, M.D. New York: Walker, 1992. Written for young adults, this absorbing 126-page book is the only full-length biography of Taussig.

Bart, Jody, ed. Women Succeeding in the Sciences: Theories and Practices Across Disciplines. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2000. A historical introduction to the work of women in the sciences in the context of education, study, and teaching. Includes a chapter on Taussig.

Blalock, Alfred, and Helen B. Taussig. “The Surgical Treatment of Malformations of the Heart in Which There Is Pulmonary Stenosis or Pulmonary Atresia.” Journal of the American Medical Association 128 (May, 1945): 189-202. The original article in which Blalock and Taussig discuss their operation and describe three case histories. The article is technical in nature but is filled with interesting details about the surgeries and attendant complications and outcomes.

Carlson, Elof Axel. Times of Triumph, Times of Doubt: Science and the Battle for the Public Trust. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2006. Examines the issues of bioethics, medical research, and medical practice as public concerns. Includes the chapter “Thalidomide: Corporate Misconduct Masquerading As an Act of God.”

Kent, Jacqueline C. Women Doctors. Minneapolis, Minn.: Oliver Press, 1998. The author traces the careers of famous women doctors, devoting a chapter to Taussig: “Queen of Hearts.”

Nuland, Sherwin B. Doctors of Medicine. New York: Knopf, 1988. Nuland discusses Taussig’s scientific achievements and points out that she humanized the practice of medicine. He wrote that Taussig “never made any attempt to control the depth of her concern for every aspect of each family’s life.”

Ravitch, Mark M. Alfred Blalock, 1899-1964. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. The biography presents details of Blalock’s collaboration with Taussig and Thomas in the development of surgery for blue baby syndrome.

Thomas, Vivien T. Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and Cardiovascular Surgery: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. The highly skilled technician who contributed to the development of the blue baby operation tells the story of his life and work.

1941-1970: November 29, 1944: Blalock and Taussig Perform the First “Blue Baby” Surgery; October 10, 1962: Thalidomide Tragedy Prompts Passage of the Kefauver-Harris Amendment.