High Pressure Convention

Half a million Americans a year die of circulatory troubles: hypertension (high blood pressure) and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). The chief reasons, many doctors think: city living and rich food.

These closely related disorders are the basic cause of strokes, most heart attacks and Bright's disease; they are rapidly becoming the leading cause of death among pregnant women. Already they kill three times as many as cancer. At the present rate, half the children born today will die from these circulatory diseases--and many more will be disabled.

Thirty of the nation's leading circulation specialists and a group of industrial bigwigs met in Cleveland last week to launch the American Foundation for High Blood Pressure. Prime mover of the Foundation is Dr. Irvine Page of the Cleveland Clinic.

Last week's discussions were informal and preliminary. No one knows exactly what makes the circulation go haywire. Heredity has something to do with it. So does diet. Emotional strain helps to bring the condition on. Arteriosclerosis seems to be connected somehow with cholesterol, a fat substance found in foods. Experimenters have produced hardening of the arteries in animals by feeding them concentrated cholesterol.

Too Much Food. Dr. Arthur Fishberg of New York believes that both diseases result from city living. Southern Negroes seldom suffer from circulatory troubles. Chinese peasants are almost unaffected, while Jews, most of whose ancestors have lived in cities for 2,000 years, are frequent victims.

Undernourished people seldom have high blood pressure. The guilty items in the diet are fats and animal proteins. "After 50," Dr. Fishberg says, "a man is better off if he does not have too much money or rich food."

Most controversial subject at the Cleveland meeting: sympathectomy--cutting the "sympathetic" nerves to reduce high blood pressure. Dr. Keith Grimson of Duke University, who sometimes cuts out the entire sympathetic nervous system, said that it helped in most of his cases and probably would be effective for a third of all hypertensive patients. Others thought that it seldom did much permanent good.

Too Few Experiments. Liveliest subject : the dog shortage. The doctors agreed that anti-vivisectionists and other organized dog lovers who care more for a few dogs than for millions of human beings were blocking medical progress.* Said Dr. Carl J. Wiggers of Western Reserve University: "We may have millions for research . . . but if we have no dogs, this foundation may as well fold up."

Said another: the city of Cleveland disposes of 28,000 stray dogs a year, but the Animal Protective League will not permit their use in laboratories. A California delegate complained that in his state unwanted dogs are made into fertilizer: "But ... we don't dare show visitors through our laboratories for fear they'll hear a dog bark."

*The antivivisectionist crusade was still going strong in the Hearst press last week.

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