Cold War - Hektoen International

Operation Pedro Pan: Saving Cuban children from communism

December 8, 2022

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Cuban children in line to emigrate. Photo via DEFELIX on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1959, lawyer and revolutionary Fidel Castro (1926–2016) overthrew the corrupt, US-supported government of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba. Castro promised reforms and democracy. However, early in his regime, members of the Batista government were […]

The appendicitis conundrum

April 7, 2022

Jayant Radhakrishnan Nathaniel Koo Darien, Illinois, United States Lorenz Heister (1683–1758) was a German surgeon and anatomist. In 1711, he described acute appendicitis in great detail and suggested that it be treated. From Institutiones chirurgicae, in quibus quicquid ad rem chirurgicam pertinet optima et novissima ratione pertractatur, Neapel, Antonio Cervone, 1749. Via Wikimedia. No […]

Medical and other memories of the Cold War and its Iron Curtain

January 28, 2021

Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe Dundee, Scotland, UK Iron Curtain as described by Churchill 1946. Edited from original. Original by BigSteve via Wikimedia. (CC BY 1.0) In 1946, Winston Churchill named the political barrier appearing between the Soviet bloc and the West the “Iron Curtain.” It lasted until 1991. I met or crossed it several times. The […]

A Cold War Vaccine: Albert Sabin, Russia, and the oral polio vaccine

May 11, 2020

James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States Albert Sabin (second from left) and Mikhail Chumakov (third from left). Credit: Courtesy Hauck Center for the Albert B. Sabin Archives, Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, University of Cincinnati Libraries. Fair Use. In the midst of the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic, when […]

Anne McLaren, transfusion, transplantation, and the nature of blood

February 6, 2020

Matthew Holmes Cambridge, UK What happened during a transfusion or transplantation between different individuals, or even members of different species? For centuries some thought that hereditable characteristics might cross between individuals or species in this manner. This belief found fresh impetus in Marxist biology during the Cold War. Anne McLaren, Oxford-trained zoologist and first […]

Should primary hyperaldosteronism be renamed Litynski-Conn Syndrome?

October 28, 2019

Gregory Rutecki Lyndhurst, Ohio, United States Michael Litynski M.D. was born in 1906 in Lodz, Poland. As a physician during World War II, he joined the Polish Resistance. He treated resistance fighters and was active during the infamous Warsaw Uprising in 1945. Dr. Litynski was also awarded the Yad Vashem medal for his brave […]

The Montreal Experiments: Brainwashing and the ethics of psychiatric experimentation

April 30, 2019

Shaan Bhambra Montreal, Canada The Allan Memorial Institute (pictured here), where the Montreal Experiments were conducted as a part of the CIA’s MKUltra project on brainwashing, continues to serve patients of the Psychiatry Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Photo by chrisinphilly5448 on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0. “We do not merely destroy our enemies; […]