Surgical Renaissance in the Heartland by Henry Buchwald;

Author:Henry Buchwald; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO017000 Biography & Autobiography / Medical, MED039000 Medical / History, HIS036090 History / United States / State & Local / Midwest (ia, Il, In, Ks, Mi, Mn, Mo, Nd, Ne, Oh, Sd, Wi)
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2020-05-11T21:00:00+00:00

10

Laboratory Funded

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

ATTRIBUTED TO CARL SAGAN

With the advent of laboratory funding, I was able to secure laboratory help, including laboratory fellows. Research productivity is enhanced by the addition of personnel, allowing for more work to be performed in a shorter time span by the division of mundane but necessary tasks. Of course, the preferred coworkers are bright, productive, and dedicated. A head of the laboratory or a technician who facilitates procedures and adds new thoughts and concepts becomes a research partner. A well-functioning laboratory is a family of people who like each other, take pleasure in working together, and share in the joy of discovery.

I always incorporated my laboratory fellows into my ongoing projects, but I also encouraged them to have a related project of their own with the full cooperation of the laboratory personnel and the use of our facilities, and at times specialized equipment (e.g., electron microscope) I obtained permission for them to use. I taught them; I learned from them. We often formed enduring relationships. I took great interest in their subsequent, often highly distinguished careers.

My first laboratory technician and head of the laboratory was Josephine Bertish, an Austrian Jewish Holocaust refugee. She was able to learn, as were both of her successors, to do everything, from complex chemical extractions and radioactivity isotope analyses to animal feed preparation, bleeding, care, and surgical assistance. Josie was a wonderful person who soon became a family friend. She gave us beautiful miniatures painted by her uncle that still hang in our house today. Unfortunately, Josie contracted pancreatic cancer during her tenure in the laboratory and died in her sixties.

I next hired Laurie Fitch, a young woman who worked well with Josie and was an extremely industrious laboratory assistant. Later, Laurie took courses in statistics and trial management and became an indispensable team member of the Coordinating Center of the $65 million Program on the Surgical Control of the Hyperlipidemias (POSCH) grant we received in the 1970s.

My first laboratory fellow was Roger Gebhard, at the time a medical student. He and I worked well together on the laboratory projects that followed my initial experiments. Roger was extremely bright. He chose to enter the specialty of internal medicine and accepted a position at the Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital, where he remained on the faculty in gastroenterology until his retirement. I wanted to continue to work with Roger. I admired his capabilities and his thinking, and I liked him very much. I offered him a partnership in my growing and now well-funded laboratory. However, in his early career, he elected to follow a different path. Many years later, we began to appear on programs together, and we resumed our relationship.

My next laboratory fellow, Marshall Schwartz, became one of my closest lifelong friends. Marshall was a medical student when he started in the laboratory. He was extremely self-possessed, imbued with great self-confidence. He immediately wanted to be responsible for an independent experiment rather than work on ongoing projects.

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