William P. Murphy Jr., inventor of modern blood bag, dies at 100

Dr. Murphy's safe and reliable container replaced the breakable glass bottles used in transfusions during the Korean War. He also helped improve pacemakers and artificial kidneys.

Dr. William P. Murphy Jr., a biomedical engineer who was the inventor of the vinyl blood bag that replaced breakable bottles during the Korean War and made transfusions safe and reliable on battlefields, in hospitals and at the scene of natural disasters and accidents, died on Thursday. at his home in Coral Gables, Florida. He was 100 years old.

His death was confirmed Monday by Mike Tomás, president and CEO of U.S. Stem Cell, a Florida company. company of which Dr. Murphy was president for a long time. He became president emeritus last year.

Dr. Murphy, the son of a Nobel Prize-winning Boston doctor, was also widely credited with early advances in the development of pacemakers to stabilize irregular heart rhythms, artificial kidneys to clean blood of impurities, and numerous sterile devices , including trays, scalpel blades, syringes, catheters and other surgical and patient care items that are used only once and thrown away.

But Dr. Murphy was perhaps best known for his work on the modern blood bag: the flexible, durable, and inexpensive sealed container made of polyvinyl chloride that did away with flimsy glass bottles and changed almost everything about storage, portability and ease of delivery and transfusion of blood worldwide.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Developed with a colleague, Dr. Carl W. Walter, in 1949-50, the bags are light, wrinkle-resistant and tear-resistant. They are easy to handle, preserve red blood cells and proteins, and ensure that blood is not exposed to air for at least six weeks. Blood banks, hospitals and other medical storage facilities depend on their longevity. Drones drop them safely in remote areas.

In 1952, Dr. Murphy joined the United States Public Health Service as a consultant and, at the request of the army, traveled to Korea during the war to demonstrate, with medical teams, the use of blood bags to transfuse wounded soldiers at aid stations near the front lines.

“This was the first major test of the bags under battlefield conditions, and it was an unqualified success,” Dr. Murphy said in a telephone interview from his home for this obituary in 2019. Over time, he noted, the bags became a mainstay of the blood-collection and storage networks of the American Red Cross and similar organizations overseas.

ImageThe vinyl blood bag developed with a colleague by Dr. Murphy, for use in transfusion. It ensures that the blood is not exposed to air for at least six weeks. Blood banks, hospitals and other medical storage facilities depend on the longevity of blood. Credit... Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Shutterstock

(For years, researchers have declared an ingredient in polyvinyl chlorides, diethylhexyl phthalate or DEHP—used in building materials, clothing, and many health care products—poses a cancer risk to humans. Since 2008, Congress has banned DEHP in children's products in the United States; l (European Union has mandatory labels; and alternative chemicals have replaced DEHP in blood bags.)

In Korea, Dr. Murphy recalls, he saw Army medics reuse needles to transfuse patients and medical instruments. were often poorly sterilized. Alarmed by the dangers of infection, he designed a series of relatively inexpensive medical trays, equipped with medicines and sterilized surgical tools that could be thrown away...