BULLETIN
HMS Faculty Receive Grants
to Transform Science
Sixteen HMS faculty members were among 115 nationwide to receive High-risk Research Awards from the National Institutes of Health that support bold and innovative projects.
New this year, the Transformative RO1 (T-R01) Program emphasizes creative ideas—projects that have the potential to transform a field of science. Since no budget cap is imposed and preliminary results are not required, scientists are free to propose new, bold ideas that may require significant resources to pursue. They are also given the flexibility to work in large, complex teams if the research problem demands it.
Frederick Ausubel, HMS professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, received a T-R01 award for his project “Identifying Novel Anti-infectives by High-throughput Screening in Whole Animals,” which aims to achieve a paradigm shift in antimicrobial drug discovery by finding next-generation anti-infectives that prevent disease by blocking pathogen adaptation to host physiology.
Sylvie Breton, HMS associate professor of medicine at MGH, received a T-R01 award for her project “3-Dimensional Modeling of Basal Cell Function in Pseudostratified Epithelia.” She will build upon her work in basal cells in the epithelia of organs and create new model systems to determine the 3-D relationships and functions of different epithelial cell types as the basal cells detect and respond to various drugs, hormones, chemicals and pathogens that appear in the cavity of the organ.
Gaudenz Danuser, HMS professor of cell biology, along with Klaus Hahn of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, received a T-R01 award for their project “Quantitative Imaging of Signaling Networks,” which aims to establish a new paradigm for the study of cellular signal transduction that combines biosensor design and live-cell imaging to produce a transformative approach to studying cellular signal transduction and decision processes.
Ru-Rong Ji, HMS associate professor of anesthesia at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Charles Serhan, the Simon Gelman professor of anesthesia at BWH, received a T-R01 award for their project “Resolvins, Protectins, and Chronic Pain Resolution.” This project employs a novel approach for chronic pain therapy using newly uncovered endogenous proresolving lipid mediators. The project will investigate whether and how these mediators can prevent and reverse neuropathic pain after nerve injury.
Loren Walensky, HMS assistant professor of pediatrics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, received a T-R01 grant for his project “A Lexicon of Stapled Peptide Helices Engineered to Capture the Protein Interactome.” The goal of this proposal is to intertwine chemistry, biology, and medicine to create a transformative high-throughput technology that precisely identifies protein targets and their explicit sites of interaction.
HMS researchers also received another type of High-risk Research Award, the New Innovator Award, which supports new investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage of their career when they may lack the preliminary data required for an R01 grant.
Mark Albers, HMS instructor in neurology at MGH, received a New Innovator
Award for his project “The Olfactory Neural Circuit as a Systems Level Model
of Neurodegenerative Diseases.”
Fernando Camargo, assistant professor of stem cell and regenerative biology
at Children’s Hospital Boston, received the New Innovator Award for his
project “Analysis of Stem Cell Dynamics and Differentiation by Cellular
Barcoding.”
Theodore Cohen, HMS assistant professor of medicine at BWH and an HSPH assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology, received the New Innovator Award for his project “Prevalence, Risk Factors and Consequences of Complex M. tuberculosis Infections.”
Gabriel Kreiman, HMS assistant professor of ophthalmology at CHB, received the New Innovator Award for his project “Towards the Neuronal Correlates of Visual Awareness.”
J. Rodrigo Mora, HMS assistant professor of medicine at MGH, received the New Innovator Award for his project “Reassessing the Physiological Role of Gut-specific Lymphocyte Homing: Implications for Autoimmunity and Tolerance.”
Sunitha Nagrath, HMS instructor in surgery at MGH, received the New Innovator Award for her project “Engineering Sensitive Microfluidic Multiplex Technology for Isolating Circulating Endothelial Progenitor and Tumor Cells to Study Angiogenesis and Metastasis in Cancer Development and Progression.”
John Pezaris, HMS instructor in surgery at MGH, received the New Innovator Award for his project titled “Machine Brain Interface.”
Patrick Purdon, HMS instructor in anesthesia at MGH, received the New Innovator Award for his project titled “A Neural Systems Approach to Monitoring and Drug Delivery for General Anesthesia.”
John Rinn, HMS assistant professor of pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, received the New Innovator Award for his project “RNA and Chromatin Formation: From Discovery to Mechanism.”
Magali Saint-Geniez, HMS instructor in ophthalmology at Schepens Eye Research
Institute, received the New Innovator Award for her project “Bioengineering
of Bruch’s Membrane for the Treatment of Age-related Macular Degeneration.”
Oral Physicians, Né Dentists, Must Participate in Overall Healthcare
In addition to restoring, replacing, and straightening teeth, dentists are making the public more aware of the role of oral inflammation in cardio- and cerebrovascular disease and premature births. Dentists are already de facto oral physicians, who are trained to recognize more than 100 genetic and systemic diseases manifest in the orofacial area. With their training in medicine and surgery, they can provide limited primary preventive care, including taking vital signs; tobacco cessation and nutrition counseling; and screening for hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, eating and neurological disorders, substance and child/domestic abuse, and oral and skin cancer; in addition to being available during national disasters for triage, administering flu vaccines (which can now be given in dental offices) and other medication.
Recognizing the potential of expanded roles for dentists, the Massachusetts legislature is considering House Bill #2081 to permit dentists to be designated oral physicians, similar to legislation already enacted that allows podiatrists and chiropractors to add the suffix physician, but does not permit dentists to do so.
Given that nondentists are now being trained to provide simple routine dental care to reduce cost and increase access to dental care, dentists—with their high economic and social status—should view these developments as an opportunity to become a superordinate oral physician to oversee all dental care. Dentists as oral physicians can then be available for limited preventive primary care.
If you agree, please ask your state senator or representative and dentist to support this change in the public interest.
Donald B. Giddon, DMD, PhD
Clinical Professor, Developmental Biology
Harvard School of Dental Medicine
Spreading Knowledge About the Flu
Photo by Rachel Eastwood
Clockwise from center, Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine; Ray Dolin, the Maxwell Finland professor of medicine (microbiology and molecular genetics) at HMS and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Kenneth McIntosh, HMS professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and a professor in the HSPH Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases; Marc Lipsitch, HSPH professor of epidemiology; and Martin Hirsch, HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor in the HSPH Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, made up the expert panel at “H1N1 In Depth,” the first in a series of lunchtime talks for the Harvard Longwood community. The discussion also included a Q&A session on flu preparedness. A video of the talk is available online (requires RealPlayer).
Community Service Awards Announced
The Office for Diversity and Community Partnership has announced the recipients of the 2009 Dean’s Community Service Awards. Initiated in 1999 by then dean Joseph Martin, the awards honor HMS faculty, trainees, students and staff for extraordinary contributions to community service and encourage volunteering among members of the HMS community.
Holcome Grier, HMS professor of Pediatrics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,
and Lyle Micheli, clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Children’s
Hospital Boston, each won the Lifetime Achievement award. Grier was honored
for his work with the Boston Ronald McDonald House, and Micheli for his work
with the Children’s Hospital Boston Division of Sports Medicine/Boston
Public Schools Sports Medicine Initiative. Marie-Louise Jean-Baptiste, HMS
assistant professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, was recognized
with the faculty award for her work with the Cambridge Medical Care Foundation.
Jenny Tam, a research fellow in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital,
received the trainee award for her involvement in the Science Club for Girls
program. Robert Daly, HMS Class of 2010, received the student award for his
work with the Humsafar Trust. And Anna Phelan, a staff assistant in the IT
department, received the staff recognition for her service with Amnesty International
USA, Group 133.
Two Fourth-years Recognized as Future Leaders
Two HMS fourth-year students have received Physicians of Tomorrow scholarships from the AMA Foundation, the charitable arm of the American Medical Association. Each scholarship provides $10,000.
Ishani Ganguli received the Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship supported by the Johnson F. Hammond, MD Fund, which recognizes a medical student with a commitment to a career in medical journalism. As an undergraduate, she served as an intern in the ABC News Medical Unit and created The Harvard Crimson’s first journalism program for underprivileged students. Prior to entering medical school, she spent a year as a staff writer at The Scientist magazine, where she received a national award for a feature article. During medical school, she developed and continues to publish a blog about medical education for The Boston Globe, and she writes health and science articles for publications including The Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Michelle Scott was named a Doris Duke International Fellow and spent a year in South Africa to improve the quality of care for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis patients. She helped establish the first community-based treatment program for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. She developed and executed the MDR TB staff training curriculum and created an educational tool for staff to use to educate patients. She is active in the Student National Medical Association and works with community groups in Boston on preventive care and health monitoring. Before entering HMS, she worked in the Peace Corps in Cote d’Ivoire and Madagascar as a community health educator.
Grant to Make Gains Against Graft-versus-host Disease
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $9.5 million project grant to researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of Minnesota studying studying graft-versus-host disease.
Joseph Antin, HMS professor of medicine and chief of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at DFCI; Jerome Ritz, HMS professor of medicine and director of the Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core and co-director of the Cancer Vaccine Center at DFCI; and Bruce Blazar, of the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center, will use the grant to further their work studying chronic GVHD, a complication that can occur after a person receives a stem cell transplant from either a related or unrelated donor for treatment of hematologic malignancies.
Based on research performed in Ritz’s lab and studies done in Minnesota in Blazar's lab, it was demonstrated that not only are T cells involved in chronic GVHD, but B cells producing antibodies against recipient tissues also may play an important role in the development of chronic GVHD. The award is designed to build on these observations and to develop new ways of preventing and treating chronic GVHD. The award renews grant funding the team received over five years ago.
During the next five years, the NIH program project grant will support research in the following three areas: testing of novel approaches to prevent or treat GVHD in clinical trials; identifying immunologic targets of GVHD in patients undergoing transplant; and studying animal models of chronic GVHD to better understand the biological basis of chronic GVHD.
Interim Chair Named for BCMP
Stephen Harrison, a Howard Hughes Investigator, the Giovanni Armenise–Harvard professor of basic biomedical science at HMS and an HMS professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, has been named interim chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. He succeeds Ed Harlow, who is stepping down to become chief scientific officer at a biotechnology company in Cambridge.
Harrison’s lab studies the atomic structures of macromolecular assemblies, such as viruses and protein/nucleic-acid complexes, to understand how they function in cells. He has played an instrumental role in developing x-ray crystallography to determine these structures. In 1978, Harrison became the first person to produce a detailed, high-resolution map of a virus. He will serve as the chair while the School conducts a search for a new head of BCMP.
NIH Funds $15m Center for Modeling Infectious Diseases
A new center that will focus on mathematical modeling of drug resistance, seasonal infectious diseases and intervention allocation will be established at HSPH. The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics will be funded through the National Institutes of Health’s Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS), which is aiming to increase capacity to model disease spread, evaluate different intervention strategies and help inform public health officials and policymakers. The expected funding total for the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at HSPH is $15,572,000 over five years.
Marc Lipsitch, HSPH professor of epidemiology, will lead the center. He is an expert in modeling infectious disease outbreaks and has been tapped by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology to help guide policy in the current H1N1 flu outbreak.
“The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics will be a home for exciting research both basic and applied, and also for new initiatives to develop our graduate curriculum and recruit students with diverse skills to work on the analysis of models and data on infectious diseases,” said Lipsitch.
It is one of two “Centers of Excellence” and three research projects that will receive funding through the MIDAS program.
“The H1N1 flu pandemic has dramatically demonstrated the vital importance of identifying communicable diseases, understanding and preventing their spread, and protecting vulnerable populations to the best of our ability,” said Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. “This new center will add to the country’s capacity to deal with communicable diseases and advance expertise in the field.”
Reaccreditation Process Begins at HMS
HMS has launched an institutional self-study process in preparation for the School’s upcoming reaccreditation in March 2011 by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). The LCME, which is jointly sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association, is the nationally recognized accreditation authority for medical education programs leading to the MD degree in the United States and Canada.
As part of the process, which usually is conducted every eight years, representatives from the faculty, administration and student body serve on committees that collect and review data about the Medical School and its educational programs. The committees, which will meet during the spring 2010 semester and are overseen by a steering committee, will evaluate whether the Medical School is meeting LCME standards in five general areas: institutional setting (administration, governance and academic environment), educational programs, student experience, faculty, and institutional resources (finances and facilities).
The self-study culminates in a final report, which is sent to LCME in preparation for their site visit from March 6 to 9, 2011. Faculty, staff and students will also be asked to meet with the LCME survey team during this time. The last reaccreditation visit took place in April 2003.
Jules Dienstag, dean for medical education, will serve as the faculty coordinator, and Lisa Muto, associate dean for institutional planning and policy, will serve as the administrative coordinator.
An HMS accreditation website has been created to keep the community informed throughout this process at http://www.hms.harvard.edu/lcme/index.html.
SPORE Grant Targets Kidney Cancer
The National Cancer Institute has awarded Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center an $11.5 million, five-year Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant to focus on cancers of the kidney. Michael Atkins, HMS professor of medicine and deputy director of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at BID, will oversee the grant, which involves collaborations with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital via the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
As the only NCI-funded SPORE focused on cancers of the kidney, this grant aims to improve detection, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of kidney cancer, which affects about 54,000 Americans and causes approximately 14,000 deaths each year. SPORE grants are designed to promote interdisciplinary and translational research that rapidly moves scientific discoveries to a clinical setting to directly benefit patients. This grant is a renewal of a previous $13.3 million kidney cancer SPORE awarded to Atkins and his team of collaborators in 2003.
Johnye Ballenger, clinical instructor in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, was nominated for the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which honors excellence in the mentoring and teaching of medical students. Nominations are submitted by the School’s Organization of Student Representatives.
Barry Bloom, Harvard University Distinguished Service professor and the Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson professor of public health at HSPH, will receive the 2009 Prix Galien USA Pro Bono Humanum award at a ceremony on Sep.30 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for his scientific contributions to the understanding of immune responses to infectious diseases like leprosy, tuberculosis and malaria. Bloom, who is the former dean of HSPH, currently focuses his research on immune reaction to TB and vaccines against infection.
Research to Prevent Blindness has presented Reza Dana, the Claes H. Dohlman professor of ophthalmology at HMS and director of the cornea service and vice chairman and associate chief of ophthalmology for academic programs at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, has been presented with the Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award. The award comes with $60,000 in unrestricted grants to support mid-career MD and PhD scientists who hold primary positions within departments of ophthalmology. Dana plans to use his award to advance translational research programs involving novel technologies to suppress inflammation and angiogenesis, to promote survival of corneal and stem cell transplants.
Sharon Inouye, HMS professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Hebrew SeniorLife, has received the 2010 Edward Henderson Award from the American Geriatrics Society (AGS). The award honors a distinguished clinician, educator or researcher whose work promotes solutions to problems inherent in caring for older adults. Recipients are invited to give the Edward Henderson State-of-the-Art Lecture during the AGS Annual Meeting. Inouye is director of the Aging Brain Center at the Aging Research Institute at Hebrew SeniorLife, and her research focuses on delirium and functional decline in hospitalized older patients.
Anna Krichevsky, HMS assistant professor of neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has received the Sontag Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist Award. The grant provides funding to scientists who are conducting research with the potential for yielding crucial insights into brain tumors. Krichevsky will receive $600,000 over four years.
Joan Miller, chief of ophthalmology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and chair of the Ophthalmology Department at HMS, has received the Macula Society’s 14th J. Donald Gass Medal. The Gass Medal is awarded to an individual for his or her outstanding contributions to the study of macular diseases. Miller is the Henry Williams professor of ophthalmology at HMS. Her focus in clinical practice is medical and surgical diseases of the retina, with special emphasis on age-related macular degeneration.
Praveen Kumar Vemula, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Jeffrey Karp in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, has been named to the inaugural class of Kauffman Entrepreneur Postdoctoral Fellows by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Vemula focuses on biomaterials, such as a platform technology to create prodrug-based hydrogels to treat inflammatory arthritis, brain tumors, and inner ear disease. The yearlong fellowship helps the fellows develop the entrepreneurial skills to bring their research innovations to the marketplace.
Leon Eisenberg, the Maude and Lillian Presley professor emeritus of social medicine at HMS, died on Sept. 15. He was 87 years old. A child psychiatrist, Eisenberg is known around the world for innovative research in autism, groundbreaking advances in pediatric clinical trials and psychopharmacology, and integration of social experience into the study of disease. He also was a leader of the Medical School’s affirmative action program, established in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 (see HMS Opens Doors to Diversity). Recently, Eisenberg had advocated for a rigorous code of ethics to avoid conflicts of interest in medicine and for depression screening in the primary care setting. In June, he was recognized by Children’s Hospital Boston with an endowment in his name.
Born in Philadelphia in 1922, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Eisenberg grew up to be bookish and inquiring. He recalled in a recent interview the experience of listening to English translations of Hitler’s speeches on the radio. “Because of that extreme threat,” he said, “I remember talking to my father and both of us agreeing that the only thing they couldn’t take away from you was what you knew inside your head.” His father dreamed that his son would go to medical school, and Eisenberg could not remember wanting anything else.
In 1942, when his turn came to apply, medical schools had stingy quotas for Jews, he said. Eisenberg was turned down by all the schools he had chosen, despite his nearly straight A’s in college. In despair, his father intervened with a Pennsylvania state legislator. Days later, a letter came saying that Eisenberg had been accepted to one of those institutions, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Eisenberg graduated as valedictorian of his medical school class. Yet he was denied, along with the seven other Jews who applied, an internship at the University of Pennsylvania hospital. He went to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, where he discovered psychiatry. He was drawn to the field’s promise to “get in and understand things—myself and other people.”
He was also intrigued by his first reading of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams—“It seemed such exciting and out-of-the-way stuff.” But he soon found psychoanalysis “politically unacceptable. How could you use a treatment that would take so long per person when the burden of mental illness was so high?”
In 1952, after a two-year stint in the Army teaching physiology to military doctors, he began a residency in child psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, where his doubts about psychoanalysis were encouraged by the great psychiatrist, Leo Kanner.
Just 10 years earlier, Kanner had identified 11 boys with an unusual constellation of traits—extreme social isolation, an inability to look people in the eye, a preoccupation with objects and ritual, and hand-flicking and other repetitive movements. Eisenberg would join him in his exploration of the newly identified psychiatric disorder, autism, paying special attention to the social and family setting of the children in which it appeared.
“What is original and powerful about Leon’s conceptualization is the understanding that the biological and social are part of one thing,” said Felton Earls, professor of social medicine at HMS and professor of human behavior and development at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Biology is not compartmentalized from social reality. Very few people think like that.”
Though Eisenberg suspected a genetic basis to the then rarely diagnosed disease, it would be years before the tools existed to look at it. In subsequent years, he turned his attention to more common childhood problems, such as school phobia, looking once again at the social setting in which they occurred.
In 1962, Eisenberg launched the first randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial of psychiatric medicine with children. “As simple as it seems, as straightforward, child psychiatry had gone on for 40 years before somebody did a randomized clinical trial,” said Earls.
Only months after arriving to head the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1967, Eisenberg was asked to join a small committee, including HMS professors Jon Beckwith, Ed Kravitz, David Potter, and Ed Furshpan, that was working to raise the number of African-American students at the School. Because of his experience with anti-Semitism, Eisenberg maintained a deep awareness of what it feels like to be excluded. His identification with those who face prejudice was at the heart of what he later considered his greatest achievement, the administrative restructuring that opened doors at the Medical School to a fuller, more diverse range of students. This push for affirmative action was galvanized by the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King.
Eisenberg was asked to chair the HMS commission on black community relations and to chair the HMS admissions committee for seven years of the early affirmative action program. “It was a wonderful place to see to it that the plan was implemented,” he said.
Alvin Poussaint, now faculty associate dean for student affairs at HMS and an HMS professor of psychiatry at Judge Baker Children’s Center, joined the School in 1969, just in time to welcome the first class to include black students recruited through the affirmative action efforts. Eisenberg had helped lead the search for Poussaint, a medical doctor who could serve as liaison between the new minority students and the faculty and administration, and who could help continue attracting top minority students from around the country.
What Eisenberg made happen in 1968, said Poussaint, “had an impact on diversity efforts all around the country. …Leon cared.” At Harvard, he said, Eisenberg was regarded by many administrators, faculty and staff as a “moral compass.”
Kravitz, the George Packer Berry professor of neurobiology at HMS, emphasized that Eisenberg had a deep commitment to increasing and supporting diversity at the School throughout his career. “He was always the first person to be involved,” Kravitz said, “and he spoke with authority and with knowledge.”
“There are too few tzaddiks [righteous people] in the world,” Kravitz added, “and I am greatly saddened that one of them is now gone.”
The rise of affirmative action at HMS occurred around the same time that the MGH Psychiatry Department became transformed from a relatively small conclave of mostly psychoanalysts to one of the most intellectually diverse departments in the country.
“Leon created an incredible academic environment—probably there has never been an environment quite like that as measured by the number of trainees who went into full-time academic careers,” said Arthur Kleinman, the Esther and Sidney Rabb professor of anthropology at Harvard and professor of medical anthropology at HMS, who entered the Psychiatry Department soon after Eisenberg arrived.
Howard Hiatt, HMS professor of social medicine and of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “Leon Eisenberg set standards for his colleagues and his students—standards of which we could be proud.”
In 1980, Eisenberg was invited by then HMS dean Daniel Tosteson to build the Department of Social Medicine (recently renamed the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine). Under the stewardship of Eisenberg, then Kleinman and Byron Good, the department helped to ignite the careers of students such as Paul Farmer and Anne Becker, the current chair and vice chair of the department, and Jim Yong Kim, the previous chair, who now is president of Dartmouth College. According to Kleinman, the entire lineage has been shaped by its exposure to Eisenberg.
“Leon, together with Arthur, created the environment that allowed all of us to study social sciences relevant to medicine,” said Farmer, who in 1990 received joint degrees in medicine and anthropology. Subsequently, Farmer trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and, along with Kim, was a founder of Partners In Health, which Eisenberg had supported since its founding. “Without the MD–PhD program Leon crafted in the mid-80s, without his example and teaching and mentorship, it would have been impossible for us to pursue academic careers in social medicine. The fact that he also supported the development of a new paradigm in social medicine permitted his students to develop service projects that eventually led to new training possibilities for the next generation of physicians.”
“I would say Leon follows in the great footsteps of the physician-psychologist-philosopher William James,” said Kleinman, “because James argued powerfully for the broad range of normal experience, for our tolerance of multiple ways of being human.”
“Leon Eisenberg is one of the seminal figures in American medicine and in psychiatry of the past half century,” Kleinman said. “He is surely one of Harvard’s greats.”
Eisenberg leaves his wife, Carola, an HMS lecturer on social medicine and former dean of students at the School; children Kathy and Mark Eisenberg and stepchildren Alan and Larry Guttmacher; grandchildren Nadja and Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot, Joshua and Rachel Guttmacher, and John and Kathleen Thornton; daughters-in-law Kristin Guyot, Blake Adams, Terry Caffery, and Brigid Guttmacher; and sisters Essie Ellis and Libby Wickler. A public service will be announced in the future. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Physicians for Human Rights, 2 Arrow Street, Suite 301, Cambridge, MA 02138; or Partners In Health, P.O. Box 845578, Boston, MA 02284.