Belding H. Scribner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Belding Hibbard Scribner, MD. (* January 18,1921 in Chicago; † June 19, 2003 in Seattle) was a U.S. physician and a pioneer in kidney dialysis.
Scribner received his medical degree from Stanford University in 1945. After completing his postgraduate studies at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, he joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Washington in 1951. Scribner was married to Ethel Hackett Scribner, they had 4 children.
In 1960, he invented a breaktrough device, the Scribner shunt, that later saved the lives of countless people with end-stage kidney disease around the globe. The first patient treated was Clyde Shields, due to treatment with the new shunt-technique he survived his chronical renal failure for more than eleven years and died in 1971. Scribners invention created a new problem to clinical practice and put physicians in a moral dilemma: Who will be treated if possible treatment is limited? The ethical issues around this dilemma are known as the Seattle experience.
In 2002 he received the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research (together with Willem J. Kolff, who invented the first artificial kidney machine). Scribner was one of the founding fathers of the world's first outpatient dialysis centers, the Northwest Kidney Center. He published many scientific papers and books up until his death in 2003.
