Intra Aortic Ballon Pump

This story may be apocryphal, but here it goes. In the late 1960s, the intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) was being readied for its first use in a human.(The IABP device was pioneered at the Grace-Sinai Hospital in Detroit during the early 1960s by Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz) Its developers thought that private insurance companies would not stand for such a radical new therapy, and approached the military, asking them to keep an eye out for IABP candidates in military hospitals.
One day, the call came. A retired general was hospitalized in Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had a history of multiple infarcts and was now end-stage. The IABP scientists were all ready to go, until they found out the general was Eisenhower. They declined the opportunity because they worried that if the IABP failed in him, it would permanently ruin the future prospects of the device.