Harold Meryman, renowned for blood work, dies at 88

Harold T. Meryman, 88, an American Red Cross physician credited with saving countless lives for his innovative work refining the process of freezing blood, allowing thousands of units of blood to be kept in long-term storage in banks around the world, died Jan. 10 at a hospital in Olney, Md.

He had received a diagnosis of prostate cancer in the late 1990s and died of coronary artery disease.

Meryman's specialty was cryobiology, the study of the effects of extremely low temperatures on living organisms. After working on his blood-freezing process for years, in 1971 he successfully devised a method of freezing concentrated red blood cells for up to 10 years and then thawing them for patients' use.

His "Meryman method," as it was dubbed, was considered a particular advantage for patients with rare blood types, which were often in short supply because blood spoiled after three weeks in refrigerators.

After Meryman mixed the red cells with glycerol, a chemical preservative to prevent the formation of ice, he would freeze the blood in liquid nitrogen at 121 degrees below zero. His innovation came in thawing the blood and removing the glycerol.

Harold Thayer Meryman was born Feb. 5, 1921, in Washington, D.C. He was a 1943 graduate of Harvard and received his medical degree in 1946 from the Long Island College of Medicine in Brooklyn, now part of the State University of New York system.

He joined the Navy that year and was assigned to the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he worked on projects involving the effects of freezing on tissues. In 1951, he spent a year in Korea and Japan researching the effects of frostbite on troops there.

In 1968, Meryman joined the American Red Cross and served in the cell, tissue and organ preservation research department.

Meryman left the Red Cross in 1994. From 2003 to 2007, Meryman served as president of CryoBioPhysica, an immunological research company based in Rockville, Md.

Survivors include his wife of 61 years, the former Mary Lane Latimer, of Sandy Spring, Md.; four children, Richard T. Meryman and Louise Meryman, both of Pine Plains, Henry Meryman of Rockville, and Charlotte Meryman of Williamsburg, Mass.; a brother; and four grandchildren.