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Letter to Beverly
Bishop
G. Edgar Folk writes: “A pleasant assignment for those of us who turn
90 years of age is to look back on the years as a physiologist. Thank you,
Beverly, for your birthday message.
“It is easy for me to summarize my daily activity. I am doing the same
things each day that I did 20 years ago, including: 1) writing book
chapters, technical papers, and research grants, 2) joint-mentoring graduate
students, and 3) giving occasional seminars. I am exceptionally fortunate in
having an office and a laboratory in the warm intellectual climate of the
Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the College of Medicine of the
University of Iowa.
“Concerning the past bench work, I am content with our carefully controlled
experiments on biological clocks, some of which were done on human subjects.
Then, I accepted the opportunity to maintain a laboratory unit at the Naval
Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, an arrangement which lasted 16
years. Among other findings, we proved by radio telemetry that three species
of bears do hibernate.
“My past mentoring of students resulted in 19 PhD degrees and six Masters.
My present co-sponsorship of graduate students is confined to weekly
consultative meetings, encouragement, and letters of recommendation; the
students’ origins are especially interesting: one is from Japan, one from
South Korea, and one from Spain.
“The American Physiological Society gave me credit for “Defining
Environmental Physiology.” It happened this way. At the Harvard Fatigue
Laboratory, I discussed the name of an advanced course with Per Scholander.
He was developing plans for his research ship, The Alpha Helix; he called
his discipline ‘Exploration Physiology.’ I decided the term, ‘Environmental
Physiology,’ would be better suited for medical school appointments. I noted
that after my book, the first textbook on Environmental Physiology, there
followed a rash of eight books on the subject. Others followed; the latest
is from the Laboratory of Environmental Physiology at Duke University.
“It is traditional in these letters to give advice to young, potential
scientists: I am asked ‘shall I go into experimental physiology for a life’s
work?’ My answer is: ‘If you ask the question, don’t go into the field.’
Only go to that occupation if you can’t keep away from it. That is, if you
can’t resist the attraction.
“I am pleased to express appreciation to the following sponsors who made my
life of science possible: John Welsh, D.B. Dill, Harwood Belding, William
Forbes, Donald Griffin, Adrian Hogben, Robert Fellows, and Kevin Campbell.
And what an honor to be a member of the American Physiological Society.”
Letter to Alan F. Hoffman
Gerhard Malnic writes: “Thank you for your invitation to write about
my life at the opportunity of reaching the age of 70, which I did in
September 2003. I am answering your kind letter only now stimulated by
reading the section on Senior Physiologists’ News in The Physiologist.
Here in Brazil, reaching 70 leads to mandatory retirement, but my Department
invited me to continue working in my laboratory, which I was very happy to
do. The Brazilian Senate has passed recently a law to allow people in the
Universities to retire only at 75, which still has to be approved by
Congress (equivalent to the American House of Representatives), which
however will not reach me. But it is also very good to go on with laboratory
work without worrying about teaching and administration. I still have two
graduate students working for their PhD, which should finish their work this
year (2005). Then there are a few younger colleagues with their students in
our group, which creates an attractive environment. It is also stimulating
to be able to follow the work of my younger daughter, Bettina, who works in
Biochemistry at our University, and is struggling to establish herself as a
good scientist. Although she has to cope with a lot of competition, I
believe that the life of a scientist these days is easier than during the
days when I started a lab, since support for Science has improved a lot
since then in Brazil, particularly in the State of Sao Paulo, where we have
an efficient supporting agency. Bettina did her post-doc training with Linda
Buck at Harvard, last year’s Nobelist in Physiology, and was invited by her
to come to the ceremony in Stockholm, obviously a very exciting occasion.
“I am working presently in two areas, one of them renal in vivo
micropuncture and microperfusion to investigate mechanisms of potassium and
hydrogen excretion, an area which I started during my post-doc in the early
sixties of last century (!) with Gerhard Giebisch at Cornell in New York and
later at Yale. This collaboration is going on, and last year I spent some
time at Yale to study potassium excretion in Romk (a potassium channel)
knock-out mice, which was possible due to my experience with in vivo
studies, which not so many physiolo-gists are doing today, as very well
analysed by Allen Cowley in the present issue of The Physiologist. The other
area concerns studies on intracellular pH regulation in cells in culture,
using fluorescence microscopy, which we have installed in the last years in
our lab, with my long-time collaborator Margarida de Mello-Aires. So, as
long as health permits, I plan to still have a few years of productive work,
passing along some of my experience to a younger generation. At the same
time, enjoying life with my wife Margit and our dog, we spend some time at
our little beach cottage near Sao Paulo, especially when my older daughter
Beatriz, a fine music teacher and performer, who lives in southern Florida,
visits us with her two daughters, our grandchildren.”
Peter J. Cohen writes: “I received my MD from Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1960 and JD from the Georgetown
University Law Center in 1995. During my medical career, I was professor and
chair of anesthesiology at the Universities of Colorado and Michigan. During
my career in academic anesthesiology, I authored several books and over 100
articles describing my basic and clinical scientific research (cerebral
blood flow and metabolism, effects of anesthetics on mitochondrial
respiration, clinical investigations of new anesthetics and analgesics).
More recently, I co-edited (with Thomas E. J. Healy) A Practice of
Anaesthesia, Edward Arnold, London (1995).
“In 1992, I left academic anesthesiology to pursue a new career in law.
After receiving my law degree, I worked on health policy for three years in
the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a component of the National Institutes
of Health. I am currently an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown
University Law Center where I teach ‘Drug Abuse and the Law: Policy,
Politics, and Public Health’ and ‘Alternative and Complementary Medicine:
Legal Issues.’ I also chair the Physicians Health Program of the District of
Columbia Medical Society which intervenes on and then coordinates the
monitoring and treatment of physicians suffering from drug dependence,
alcoholism, or any other condition that may interfere with their ability to
provide patient care. Since entering the field of law, I have published a
dozen works analyzing legal and bioethical issues. My most recent
contributions are Drugs, Addiction, and the Law: Policy, Politics, and
Public Health, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, NC (2004) and Science,
Politics, and the Regulation of Dietary Supplements—It’s Time to Repeal
DSHEA, in press, American Journal of Law & Medicine. |
