Ask and help your child to answer the Quick Discussion Question. The drug was a tranquilizer that had been aggressively marketed in Europe. MINIMAL. It provides a graphic example of the interplay between altruism and self-interest in race relations. Dr. Helen Taussig Cliff McMullen. Although Vivien Thomas was clearly Dr. Blalock’s equal as a surgeon, Dr. Blalock never acknowledged this. Remember the discussion between Harold, Vivien’s brother, and their father about what it took to improve the situation of blacks in America? Read more from Helen here. Mr. Thomas was so talented and knowledgeable that at Johns Hopkins he was asked to train young doctors in the techniques of surgery. Contracting whopping cough left her with a significant hearing loss; which, with … Yet, Dr. Blalock, who came from a wealthy Southern family, never paid Vivien Thomas a salary commensurate with his responsibilities or his contribution. What is meant by that? Were they? The development of the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas shunt is examined in … 1. 7. 122 & 123. The party scenes have been transformed from a birthday party for Dr. Blalock to which Mr. Thomas was not invited to a dinner celebrating the blue baby operations. Thomas and Blalock had, in effect, set up a separate world in the laboratory in which they treated each other without consideration of their respective races. Young Olga Thomas John Leslie Wolfe. We have not been able to find any basis in the historical record for the scenes in Something the Lord Made between Vivien Thomas and his wife and family or for the scenes between Alfred Blalock and his wife and colleagues. 18. Original commissioned portrait of Dr. Helen Taussig by Jamie Wyeth on the left. Dr. Blalock was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and awarded numerous honors including the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. Compare the contributions to the Civil Rights Movement of Vivien Thomas and his brother Harold, who was a plaintiff in a landmark case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Available from Amazon.com. Leaving aside the question of whether Dr. Blalock should have encouraged Mr. Thomas to attend college and become a surgeon, describe why the Blalock/Thomas team is an example of effective teamwork. (1899-1964) Dr. Blalock earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins in 1922. The movie will air on HBO on May 30, 2004, at 9 p.m. Premiers also will be held in New York City and Los Angeles. This allowed Dr. Blalock to take the risk of doing harm to his patient and still act in an ethical manner. They would discuss the scientific problems that Dr. Blalock was trying to solve and together design experiments. Parenting Points (2) However, Dr. Blalock did not treat Thomas as an equal beyond the walls of the laboratory or operating room. Banks, having invested their depositors’ money in businesses that went under or in real estate that had depreciated in value, became insolvent and simply shut their doors. Given an honorary doctor of laws (Johns Hopkins did not give honorary doctorates in medicine), he became an instructor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Featured Actors: Narrated by Morgan Freeman. Many religious people would take the position taken by Eileen’s mother, that the operation itself and the possibility of the operation was an expression of God’s will. Open heart surgery includes surgery on the blood vessels leading to and from the heart. Open heart surgery includes surgery on the blood vessels leading to and from the heart. The residents of Nashville’s black middle-class enclave created a world of their own. He served there until his retirement in 1963. Taussig identified thalidomide (a drug given to mothers to treat everything from morning sickness to insomnia and cough) as the culprit, causing its withdrawal from sale. Why was cardiac surgery referred to as the “Mount Everest” of medicine before November of 1944? 6. Upon graduation, Dr. Taussig was assigned a job no one wanted, directing the Pediatric Cardiology Clinic at Johns Hopkins. See Comprehension Test/Homework Assignment Questions 8 and 9. One of the most important ethical obligations for a doctor is to make sure that his or her treatments do no harm. Was the first blue baby operation an experiment, as the priest charged? They were not friends because Dr. Blalock kept Mr. Thomas in a subordinate position and didn’t invite Mr. Thomas to important social occasions, such as the large party thrown for Dr. Blalock. No. (However, it should be noted that Dr. Blalock gave Mr. Thomas an incredible gift by training him as a lab technician and surgeon in days when most Southern whites didn’t think that blacks could handle that type of work.). His association with Dr. Blalock was one of the most productive partnerships in the history of medical research. Do you agree with the priest that Dr. Blalock was being arrogant and had embarked on a vain quest for glory by operating on the heart of a blue baby patient? Based on his findings Dr. Blalock urged wider use of plasma or whole-blood transfusions to improve treatment for surgical shock. He discovered that people went into shock due to loss of blood or other fluids. Dr. Taussig was an early female graduate from Johns Hopkins Medical School. It shows doctors from different disciplines cooperating to make an important medical breakthrough and describes a pivotal time in the development of heart surgery. Give reasons for your answer. What did Dr. Blalock see in Vivien Thomas a few weeks after Thomas began to work for him? She is a qualified nurse and has written for the British Journal of Cardiac Nursing, and worked as a columnist in the Nursing Times. Helen Cowan completed a PhD in cardiac pharmacology at Oxford in 2002. Links to the Internet 13. His employer was Dr. Alfred Blalock, a medical research scientist at the Vanderbilt University Medical School. There is no one right answer to this question. Dr. Walter Dandy David Bailey. I have some regrets. Nonetheless, the ethics of the scientific community require that those who do the work get the credit. Thalidomide had been thought to be very safe. 18. He was 19 years of age and wanted to become a doctor. She received her A.B. 11. 17. What would have happened if either of them had not pulled his weight in the team effort? Helen Taussig. One of the main components of caring is to nurture another individual. Yet she was a trailblazer and it’s time to learn what she taught. The father pointed out that Harold, the grandson of a man born into slavery, had a college education. Outside, the old rules remained.” What was meant by that? It contains sections on Nashville and its black community absent from the fictionalized version. The constant pumping of the heart is necessary for life to continue. The incident in the film that has him quitting, selling pharmaceuticals, and then having to ask to be rehired is a way to dramatize the importance to him of the work and the fact that he was underpaid. Her work in the clinic gave Dr. Taussig the opportunity to see hundreds of blue babies, children who had deformities of the heart that prevented much of their blood from reaching their lungs. In 1959, he and Taussig jointly received Gairdner Foundation Award (Toronto) totaling $25,000. Benefits of the Movie Taussig took the flame from these female torchbearers and lit a fire (in a fashion): she won more than 30 major awards and 20 honorary degrees. To me, Taussig is a true inspiration. With the Great Depression making carpentry work scarce, he thought himself lucky to find a job as a janitor. No. Available from Amazon.com. The Johns Hopkins Hospital named the Helen B. Taussig Congenital Heart Disease Center in her honor, and in 2005 the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine named one of its four colleges in her honor. Physician and cardiologist Helen Brooke Taussig spent her career as the head of the Children's Heart Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. Many of their discoveries would not have been made or would have been made later by others. 14. Blalock, Taussig and Thomas, no one had demonstrated that major surgery on the blood vessels of the heart was possible. Vivien Thomas made major contributions to every phase of the development of these procedures. Some blacks probably thought that Thomas was acting above them and resented it. One of their four children was Helen B. Taussig (1898–1986), a noted pediatrician and cardiologist. At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Blalock, Vivien Thomas, and Dr. Helen Taussig, a pediatric heart specialist, developed a shunt technique to treat blue baby syndrome. Thomas, pp. Blalock, like anyone else, should be judged as a product of his times. That Thomas was talented and that he was someone Dr. Blalock could train to be a good lab technician. Vivien Thomas fully participated in developing the blue baby operations, but he was not given credit for his contribution nor was he acknowledged to be a leading instructor of surgery for more than three decades. “Partners of the Heart” is an excellent PBS documentary. Discussion Questions Relating to Ethical Issues will facilitate the use of this film to teach ethical principles and critical viewing. At the same time, because of segregation, there were many opportunities that were not open to Mr. Thomas. Today almost all banks have Federal deposit insurance which protects deposits up to the amount of $100,000. in 1927 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Located in the dreary basement of the hospital, the clinic served extremely ill children. Helen Brooke Taussig (May 24, 1898 – May 20, 1986) was an American cardiologist, working in Baltimore and Boston, who founded the field of pediatric cardiology. HELEN B. TAUSSIG, M.D. After another surgeon had turned her down, Dr. Taussig suggested to Dr. Blalock that a surgical solution could be found. The depositors could not get their money. Vivien Thomas graduated with honors from Nashville’s Pearl High School in 1930. From the standpoint of Dr. Blalock’s responsibility as a friend to Mr. Thomas, does the answer matter? Before Drs. Helen Taussig also headed the pediatric cardiac clinic. Why was Nashville different than other Southern communities before the advent of the Civil Rights movement? This required, he argued, that people on occasion put their futures on the line. White people at Johns Hopkins were unused to a black man taking on such a role and they felt insecure when Mr. Thomas appeared in a white lab coat. He served as the first resident in surgery at the new Vanderbilt University Hospital and stayed on as professor of surgery until 1940. AKA Helen Brooke Taussig. Both films are enriching. See Last US Medical School That Used Live Animals In Teaching Surgery Ends Practice” and Announcement by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The story of Vivien Thomas and Alfred Blalock is an excellent paradigm for the study of racism in the United States during the period 1930 – 1980. These films describe the unique and productive association between Vivien Thomas, a black high school graduate, and his white mentor and employer, Dr. Alfred Blalock. Discussion Questions Dr. Blalock promised that it would never happen again, and it didn’t. The important point is that the child would surely have died very soon without the operation. One measure of the progress in Civil Rights in the United States is that in 2004, more than 11 percent of the medical students at Johns Hopkins University Medical School were black. However, Dr. Blalock never fully acknowledged his assistant’s contribution and claimed the results of Mr. Thomas’ creativity as Blalock’s own. A good answer will include a reference to the concept of nurturing. It was said of Mr. Thomas and Dr. Blalock that “In the privacy of the lab, they made the rules. Afterwards, Thomas trained young doctors at Johns Hopkins Medical School in methods of heart surgery. That doesn’t happen at the present time because the federal government insures deposits in banks up to a certain level. These treatments saved countless lives during WWII and thereafter. While a mid-20th century interracial partnership in the field of medical research and an important medical breakthrough are each worthy of note, there is much more to this story. A good answer will point out at least the following two facts: (1) Dr. Blalock received the larger salary and the kudos as the scientist who discovered new treatments. The reason that Mr. Thomas and his fiance, Clara, were so happy that he had gotten a job, even a job as a janitor, was that jobs were hard to come by during the Great Depression. Vivien Thomas’ role was more unique than the role played by his brother. After Dr. Blalock and Dr. Taussig took full credit for the operation and didn’t given Mr. Thomas any credit, the character of Vivien Thomas in the movie says to Blalock: “I’m invisible to the world. One knows the answer key for the same amount as white teachers for the test/homework assignment shock. 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