Defying Odds

With machines and a new drug

Singing, dancing and bearing wild flowers, thousands of Yugoslavs celebrated in a dozen Serbian towns last week as the stafeta, a ceremonial baton, passed through on its annual tour. Carried by relay runners throughout the country's six republics, the stafeta traditionally ends up in Belgrade on May 25 for the official birthday celebration of President Josip Broz Tito. This year the hollow, gold-plated baton contains a special message: "Our desire that you get well is expressed on the lips and resounds in the hearts of all Yugoslavs."

Tito may never hear that message. For the past two months, he has been wavering between life and death at the Ljubljana Clinical Center in Slovenia, where he underwent amputation of his left leg on Jan. 20. Now semicomatose, he is stricken with a formidable array of ailments: kidney failure, heart trouble, internal hemorrhaging, pneumonia, infection and high fever. Yugoslav officials have given Tito up for dead on at least two occasions. Yet the tough old Resistance fighter has continued to defy long medical odds. His tenacity has far surpassed even that of Spain's Generalissimo Francisco Franco in 1975; stricken by three successive heart attacks at 82, Franco survived in the hospital for 34 days.

Tito's own physical stamina is doubtless the main reason for his survival, but another important factor has been the resourcefulness of his medical team, led by an old wartime comrade, Dr. Bogdan Brecelj, 74. The physicians have relied increasingly on medical machinery ever since his kidney failure and the onset of pneumonia. Dialysis treatment, to replace the kidneys' blood-cleansing function, has been used since late February. Tito is also receiving oxygen, and is reportedly hooked up to a respirator, which forces air in and out of his fluid-filled lungs, and an external pacemaker to regulate his erratic heartbeat.

Another apparent last-ditch expedient in Tito's remarkable survival has been the use of an experimental U.S. drug called Moxalactam, produced by Eli Lilly & Co. of Indianapolis. The penicillin-related drug has not yet been licensed for sale in the U.S. But when Tito's doctors requested an emergency shipment late last month, permission was almost immediately granted by both the State Department and the Food and Drug Administration. Initial results were encouraging. Nevertheless, high fever has persisted and medical experts doubt that the new drug can maintain his life.

The feat of keeping Tito alive has also produced a salutary political effect: it has given Yugoslavia time to prepare for his passing. Since January, the collective leadership that Tito put in place has been functioning smoothly and appears to be proving itself capable of running the country without him. Among ordinary Yugoslavs today, concern persists, but the tension of the first days of Tito's final illness has given way to stoical acceptance. Said Joze Smole, Tito's former personal secretary and member of the Central Committee of the League of Communists: "We have very deep emotional ties with Tito, who is the symbol of Yugoslavia. But we do not expect something that will go against the law of nature."

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