Belding H. Scribner

Belding Hibbard Scribner, MD. (* January 18,1921 in Chicago; † June 19, 2003 in Seattle) was a U.S. physician and a pioneer in kidney dialysis.

Scribner received his medical degree from Stanford University in 1945. After completing his postgraduate studies at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, he joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Washington in 1951. Scribner was married to Ethel Hackett Scribner, they had 4 children.

In 1960, he invented a breaktrough device, the Scribner shunt, that later saved the lives of countless people with end-stage kidney disease around the globe. The first patient treated was Clyde Shields, due to treatment with the new shunt-technique he survived his chronic renal failure for more than eleven years and died in 1971.

Scribners invention created a new problem to clinical practice and put physicians in a moral dilemma: Who will be treated if possible treatment is limited? The ethical issues around this dilemma are known as the Seattle experience. In 1964, Scribner's presidential address to the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs discussed the problems of patient selection, termination of treatment, patient suicide, death with dignity, and selection for transplantation. This experience with selecting who would receive dialysis is often recognized as the beginning of bioethics.

To provide dialysis on a routine basis outside a research setting, Dr. Scribner turned to the King County Medical Society for sponsorship of a community supported outpatient dialysis center. James Haviland, then president of the Society, worked tirelessly to bring Scribner's vision to fruition. As a result, the Seattle Artificial Kidney Center was established in January 1962. Eventually renamed Northwest Kidney Centers, it was the world’s first out-of-hospital - "outpatient" - dialysis treatment center. the outpatient model of dialysis care has been the standard dialysis care delivery model worldwide since Scribner helped establish the Northwest Kidney Centers.

In 2002 he received the [Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2002, (together with Willem J. Kolff.

He published many scientific papers and books up until his death in 2003.