My name is Dr. Charles Richard Drew. The American Red Cross blood program is a direct result of my work as a medical pioneer. In 1940 I published a paper showing that when plasma is separated from the rest of human blood, it can be stored for longer periods of time. This discovery allowed the creation of blood banks, where donated plasma could be stored until urgently needed.

As a youth I was headed for a career in athletic and the coaching field rather than for medicine. I attended Dunbar High School and Amherst College, then medical school at Montreal’s McGill University. After graduation I was a biology and chemistry instructor, and the athletic coach
at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Soon, my ambition focused to the field of medicine. I made my discovery while doing research at Columbia University. By the time I graduated I had formulated a plan to have plasma sent to soldiers during WWII. “The answer to the transfusion dilemma lay in the use of plasma, the straw yellow fluid that remains after the cells in the blood have been removed by centrifuging. Plasma offered several advantages beside a longer shelf life: it was much cheaper to handle than whole blood; it could also be used for people of all blood types (A, B, AB and O) and it seldom produced serious reactions in patients (www.answers.com)”. The first air shipment left England on August 9, 1940. By January 1941, through the combined efforts of the American Red Cross and the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association had helped Britain to accumulate a large supply of plasma.

The storage of blood in plasma form has saved many lives since I brought the process forward in the thirties, and created the model for blood and plasma storage that is used by the Red Cross even today.

In 1950 while driving to Tuskegee, Alabama for an annual meeting with three friends, I was killed in a automobile accident. I was seriously injured and rushed to nearby Alamance County General Hospital where my fight for life ended. I left behind a devoted wife Lenore, four children and a legacy.

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