Cardiologist, anti-war activist Bernard Lown dies at 99

BOSTON (AP) — Dr. Bernard Lown, a Massachusetts cardiologist who invented the first reliable heart defibrillator and later co-founded an anti-nuclear war group that was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, died Tuesday. He was 99. The Boston Globe reports the Lithuania-born doctor’s health had been declining from congestive heart failure. Lown had helped advance cardiac treatment as a professor at Harvard University and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He’d invented the direct-current defibrillator, or cardioverter. He was also an outspoken social activist, founding Physicians for Social Responsibility and later co-founding International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.