Chapter 05: An Interest in Malignancy
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Description
Dr. Levin explains that his focus on gastroenterology, and specifically his interest in ulcerative colitis, led to his interest in cancer as the disease was associated with colitis. In this segment he reviews a number of people who influenced his direction. Dr. Levin wrote a large grant to study the relationship of the two diseases. With this grant (administered by John E. Ultmann, another mentor), his interest in malignancy began. At the time, there was a void in this area. Ultmann advised him to “Learn everything you can about colon cancer, and you can make a mark in this field.” Dr. Levin notes that was recruited to MD Anderson in ’84 to head the new section of Gastrointestinal Oncology. Dr. Levin was recruited to the Section of Gastroenterology (as Assistant Professor, then Professor) at the University of Chicago School of Medicine in 1972. He saw a lot of GI cancer and his involvement in oncology evolved. In his role as Director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Clinic, he traveled to other clinics such as the Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Roswell Park to see how they put together multidisciplinary services.
Identifier
LevinB_01_20130207_C05
Publication Date
2-7-2013
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Bernard Levin, MD, Oral History Interview, February 07, 2013
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Path The Researcher Joining MD Anderson Professional Path Influences from People and Life Experiences The Administrator Evolution of Career Professional Practice The Professional at Work Building/Transforming the Institution Multi-disciplinary Approaches
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s fine. I’m interested how that interest in gastroenterology began to deepen and kind of take on more facets and how you chose a direction from there.
Bernard Levin, MD:
Well, I was working, and having then completed my fellowship in gastroenterology, my then chief was Irwin Rosenberg, who had succeeded Joseph Kirsner. Irwin came from Boston and had a great interest in diarrheal illnesses. He had worked in Bangladesh and had also spent some time at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. But he came from Harvard and brought a new dimension and a particular interest in folate metabolism, for which he was world-famous i and also an interest in nutrition, both of which became very important in the then Section of Gastroenterology. I became interested in ulcerative colitis, because that was the strength of the program. Joseph Kirsner was a world-famous figure in inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s disease. And that led to some interest in cancer associated with ulcerative colitis of longstanding. And that developed into an interest in writing a grant to study that and submission through the then director of the University of Chicago Cancer Research Center. His name was John Ultmann. And John was a remarkable man who had come from New York. He had studied at Francis Delafield Hospital in Columbia University, and his mentor there was Alfred Gellhorn. He came imbued with a tremendous amount of energy. He and his wife, Ruth Ultmann, were notable figures. John was a gifted teacher and a very well-organized administrator. And he was the captain of the team that put this research grant together. Again, I’ll never forget my first attempt at writing a grant and his literally throwing me out of his office, telling me to get lost, because I hadn’t done an adequate job. He was a remarkably frank individual. You knew exactly where you stood. He became a friend or at least a close colleague. And his wife, Ruth, became a very good friend with whom I subsequently helped to found a hospice in the south side of Chicago, which was another diversion.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I’m sorry, remind me of his name again?
Bernard Levin, MD:
Ultmann, Ultmann.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And first name?
Bernard Levin, MD:
John. John E. Ultmann. He died about four years ago—, having retired. So this began my interest in malignancies. That then developed into an interest in colorectal cancer, and there was a void. In our Section. No one was really interested—and—John Ultmann said to me, “Why don’t you learn everything there is to know about colon cancer, and you can really become a specialist in this field.” And that meant bridging between oncology and gastroenterology, a concept which wasn’t particularly well known at that time. I managed to garner some interest from Kirsner and Rosenberg, and from the oncologists, to start what was then called a gastrointestinal oncology clinic.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now tell me, where were you in your path here? Because you’d finished up—were you at that point on the faculty?
Bernard Levin, MD:
Uh-hunh (affirmative).
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, and so what year did you join the faculty?
Bernard Levin, MD:
—I think 1972 as a junior member. I may have still been doing my fellowship, but I got a faculty appointment. I don’t know. It was some sort of hybrid, I think.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I see. Okay. I wasn’t clear about that.
Bernard Levin, MD:
I became interested in gastrointestinal oncology, and I was allowed to recruit a social worker, which is actually how I met my wife, because she was a medical student and had been a social worker, and she volunteered for this position with an ulterior motive, as it turned out.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Smart woman.
Bernard Levin, MD:
Well—then I recruited a coordinator whose name was Susan Schulmann, who was a Russian major whose husband was a medical student at the time. Susan and I have remained in touch ever since. She now is no longer married to Patrick and lives in Salt Lake City. But Susan was very hopeful in establishing some sort of organized database. And we recruited a nurse. So we started to see people with cancer in the so-called GI oncology clinic. We really didn’t have much to offer them.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So this was at this point a section, not a full-on department?
Bernard Levin, MD:
It was a tiny part of a section.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Tiny part of a section.
Bernard Levin, MD:
It was a clinic with aspirations to become something more substantial. Still, I lived in both worlds—gastroenterology and gastrointestinal oncology—with a hope that I would become more involved in oncology. I went around the country seeing what other people were doing in GI cancer. I went to the Mayo Clinic, where there was a very important person in my life who is well known, Charles Moertel. He was the father of American gastrointestinal oncology. He had been a gastroenterologist but veered into oncology. He was a very smart man with a very definite view of how clinical research should be done. He was, in my mind, the prototype of a multidisciplinary physician. Because Mayo was so well organized, he could easily have consultations with radiologists, with pathologists, with the surgeons, all of that about a specific patient. And that became my model. I also went to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where I attended a course and by chance met the man who would subsequently recruit me to MD Anderson, Irwin Krakoff, who was then responsible for Phase I trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. And he would subsequently become the head of the comprehensive cancer center at University of Vermont, where I subsequently spent eight months, which is another strange coincidence. But then, Irwin Krakoff, and I met and talked about Phase I trials.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
May I interrupt you just for one moment? I’d like to put this on pause for a second. (The recorder is paused.) I have the recorder back on.
Bernard Levin, MD:
I also went to Roswell Park and M.D.Anderson to study how they managed GI malignancies. So I got some ideas but then came back to the University of Chicago and used this information for the GI oncology clinic.
Recommended Citation
Levin, Bernard MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 05: An Interest in Malignancy" (2013). Interview Chapters. 1341.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1341
Conditions Governing Access
Open
