A modern dialysis machine being used on a patient.

Kidneys keep people alive by removing waste products and controlling the levels of important minerals in our blood. Before 1960, kidney failure was essentially fatal. Acute dialysis, the process of artificially doing the kidney’s job for it, could only keep patients alive temporarily. In 1960, Belding Scribner, Wayne Quinton, and David Dillard developed a new way to access the blood, the Scribner shunt, that enabled chronic dialysis over the course of years. This process could now keep patients alive for years or even decades after kidney failure. Scribner sought to get his technology to as many patients in need as possible, and together with James Haviland he created the world’s first outpatient dialysis clinic in 1962, now known as the Northwest Kidney Centers.

Providing patients with chronic dialysis is very expensive, and Scribner couldn’t obtain the necessary funds from philanthropic organizations. Fortunately, the federal government saw the potential of chronic dialysis and stepped in to support the clinic until they found additional funding. Because treatment was still expensive and limited, a committee was also formed to determine on an anonymous basis which patients would be admitted, serving as one of the first ever bioethics committees. Scribner continued to fight for more accessible treatment for the nation, and helped enact legislation that would provide Medicare support for dialysis.

Given Scribner’s success, the government proceeded to develop dialysis availability around the nation. Under Scribner’s direction, The Department of Veterans Affairs quickly established a large-scale dialysis program in 30 units across their system of hospitals. The Public Health Service provided similar funding to the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. With Scribner’s advocacy, two research programs were established across multiple NIH institutes, which would fund the majority of early clinical research on dialysis.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people with kidney failure are treated with chronic dialysis, extending their lives while they wait for a kidney transplant.