Donald Pinkel, a medical researcher who developed a treatment for childhood leukemia, has died at the age of 95

He was 95 when he died on March 9 at his home in San Luis Obispo, California. Saint Jude announced his death, but did not give a precise reason.

Dr. When Pinkel entered medicine in the early 1950s, the specialty of pediatric oncology – cancer in children – was one of the most unpleasant and hopeless in the field. The most common form of the disease in children was acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a blood cancer with a five-year survival rate of only 4%.

As a young practitioner, Dr. Pinkel treated children for polio at the Massachusetts military base. He was paralyzed for a time, forced to relearn to walk and, after developing a persistent case of pneumonia, decided to get away from the cold winter in the Northeast.

Danny Thomas, including those who persuaded him to go to Memphis, was a well-known comedian and TV star at the time. Early in his career, Thomas, often referred to by Catholics as the patron saint of lost causes, if he is successful in show business. He said he would build Judas. The tomb turned out to be a children’s hospital.

Dr. When Pinkel arrived in Memphis, St. Judah was still under construction; It was the only place to use the office.

“People thought I was going to be crazy to go there,” he said. Smithsonian magazine in 2016. “This was a very random situation led by a Hollywood character. “One of my colleagues told me I was going to delay my career.”

Dr. Pinkel insisted that there should be a canteen where doctors, researchers, patients and parents could meet. You helped design Jude. She reinforced the idea, supported by Thomas, that families seeking care would have no financial costs.

“Sometimes he referred to me as a Communist,” said Dr. “Because I didn’t think the kids would have to pay anything,” Pinkel said. Money should never interfere. As a society, we need to ensure they receive world-class care. “

He also received assurances that there would be no racial discrimination between patients and staff. Thomas hired a black architect, Paul R. Williams, the building was designed and St. Judas became the first integrated children’s hospital in the south when it opened in 1962.

Dr. Pinkel has made regular visits to the hospital as a physician and has also undertaken research work for the treatment of pediatric leukemia. Many doctors like Dr. greeted Pinkel with mockery and suspicion.

James R. Downing, in an interview with St. He is the current CEO and CEO of Jude. “He said there was pessimism in the medical facility, but he had hope.”

Some researchers found it immoral to conduct medical experiments on children, but Dr. Pinkel believed the alternative – 96 percent of deaths – was even worse. He only conducted clinical trials on his young patients with the consent of their parents.

“We’re tired of the gravediggers,” he said.

Dr. Pinkell worked with Sidney Farber in Boston who pioneered the use of chemotherapy to treat young people with leukemia. Dr. Pinkel, S. Jude tried different drug treatments and doses and eventually decided to use drugs to kill cancer cells.

At first, progress was slow and many patients did not survive. Dr. Pinkel tried to stay calm as her mourning parents came to her and expressed their pain and sometimes anger.

“When they are gone”, Dr. “I was closing the door and rolling my eyes,” Pinkel told the Smithsonian.

He developed a treatment program called Total Therapy, which combines heavy doses of chemotherapy, injection of drugs into the spine to attack central nervous system cancer cells, radiation therapy (which was later dropped), and prolonged chemotherapy for more than two or three hours. During the year that patients go into remission.

In a study conducted in the late 1960s, Dr. Pinkel has managed to increase the five-year “cure rate” for children with leukemia to 50 percent, an unprecedented result that some medical professionals are skeptical of. Dr. Pinkel published a study of her findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1971.

“It was the first study where I was able to use the word cure,” he later said.

One skeptic, Alvin Mauer, Dr. He called Pinkel a scam. However, after visiting Judah, he earned so much that he took the post of hospital director, Dr. Pinkel got it.

Dr. In the years since Pinkel’s first experiments, his concept of holistic therapy has gained wide acceptance in medicine. Treatment of childhood leukemia has improved to the point where patients now have a 94% five-year survival rate.

A cancer researcher and S. “Donald Pinkel was really a man who treated childhood leukemia,” said Downing, who is Jude’s principal. “Pinkel was a medical giant. He has never been afraid to solve the most difficult problem and he knew that as human beings we can solve it ”.

Donald Paul Pinkel was born on September 7, 1926 in Buffalo. His father was a hardware salesman and his mother was a housewife with seven children.

Dr. Pinkell went to mass with his family and later attended St. He remembered praying to Jude because, in his own words, “My parents had seven children, but I was their problem.”

While serving in the Navy during World War II, he studied at Cornell University and became interested in biology and science. He returned to Buffalo after the war, graduating from Canisius College in 1947 and medical school at the University of Buffalo (now part of the State University of New York system) in 1951.

He served as a pediatrician in the Army Medical Corps and developed polio in 1954, a year before the Jonah Salk vaccine became widely available. Dr. It took over a year for Pinkel to regain his ability to walk.

After conducting cancer research in Boston, she returned to Buffalo to head the pediatrics division of the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, the country’s oldest cancer research institute. When the long-term consequences of polio lead to pneumonia and other complications, Dr. Pinkel began looking for warmer climates.

Downing, Dr. “What it did was instill compassion in him,” she said of Pinkel’s polio experience. “He knew what it was like to be sick all your life.”

Dr. Pinkell, St. In addition to his research on childhood leukemia in Judah, he has led efforts to study sickle cell diseases and other cancers and diseases. She also noted that the health of children from a negative background, particularly African American children, is often damaged by malnutrition. st. She initiated a feeding plan in Judah that became the model for the federal special supplemental nutrition program for women, babies and children.

Dr. Pinkell in 1973. Judas and for the next two decades worked for hospitals and medical schools in Wisconsin, California, Pennsylvania and Texas. He retired from medicine in 1994 and later settled in San Luis Obispo, where he taught biology for 89 years at California State Polytechnic University.

His first marriage to Marita Donovan ended in divorce. Survivors include pediatric oncologist Catherine Howart, with her husband for over 40 years; nine children; AND; 16 grandchildren; And five grandchildren. Her son Christopher Pinkel passed away in 2019.

In 1972, Dr. Pinkel was one of the scientists who took it. Albert Lasker Prize for Clinical Medical Research. He was also replaced by the Charles F .. Catering Award for Cancer Research and many other awards. In 2017, S. Judy’s currently tallest building, with a 100-acre campus, 5,500 employees and an annual budget of $ 1.2 billion, Dr. was named in Pinkel’s honor.

“Me to S. What made Jude want to come,” he said at the time, “is that we had the opportunity to do science and create great humanity.”

Source: Washington Post

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