Chapter: 05 Outreach Overseas and Some Post-Retirement Activities

Chapter: 05 Outreach Overseas and Some Post-Retirement Activities

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Description

Dr. Bodey comments on some of his activities involving international groups. He first mentions European Organization for Research on Treatment of Cancer, which first looked at anti-tumor agents, but then organized the Antimicrobial Therapy Project Group in 1973. Dr. Bodey explains how he became involved and also why there were few instances of inter-institutional collaboration on infectious diseases in the United States. He briefly talks about his many lecture trips overseas. He also explains that, even after his retirement in 1995, he continued to lecture at MD Anderson, however this year he has “closed the door on MD Anderson.” He comments briefly on institutional changes that took place prior to his retirement. He notes how pleased he is that he was recently named a Distinguished Alumnus for his class year at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Identifier

BodeyGP_01_20130619_C05

Publication Date

6-19-2013

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - The ResearcherActivities Outside Institution Overview Career and Accomplishments Post Retirement Activities Dedication to MD Anderson, to Patients, to Faculty/Staff Personal Reflections, Memories of MD Anderson Personal Background MD Anderson Culture Growth and/or Change

Transcript

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Turn on the recorder?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

You can put it all in.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Okay.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Europeans got this cancer treatment group that involved multiple nations of Europe. They did the same sort of thing that we did in terms of investigating new antitumor agents. Sometimes a new antitumor agent came from Europe, and they might have first crack at it. Then they developed an infectious disease group within that EORTC. Dr. Jean Klastersky, from Belgium—Brussels—was the leader of that group.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

How did you become connected with this group? It was called, just for the recorder, the European Organization for Research on Treatment of Cancer. How did you become—?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

They had some interactions with the chemotherapy group. There were several chemotherapy groups here in the United States. We were with the Southwestern group, but there were several others. They were predominantly geographical, but not completely. We had some members that were in Ohio and some places like that, but they were sort of geographical. I don’t remember exactly how many of them there were, but probably four or five of them. So we had some interactions from time to time with the European group. Sometimes there would be conferences or something over there. I gave lectures several times over at their conferences. Sometimes we would have some of them coming over here. There was a certain amount of informational flow between the EORTC and some of the groups here in the United States. Particularly, they had, I’m sure, some interactions with the National Cancer Institute, but the NCI had its own investigational drug program there, because they still had wards of cancer patients at NIH.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

So the Antimicrobial Therapy Project Group—can you tell me what sort of initiative was that? What was its purpose?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Well, that was just doing the same sort of thing that we were doing, but a lot of the—well, some of the institutions there didn’t have anywhere near the size of population of cancer patients available to them that we had here, so they joined together, whereas we never had a multi-institutional infectious disease group here in the United States. Each one of the institutions—some of them didn’t have any particular interest in doing studies, and those that did had their own. So there were some people at the National Cancer Institute, the Baltimore Cancer Research Center, and— I don’t know—maybe two or three others around the country, but they all worked independently.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What as your view of that? Do you think it would have been more effective for people to join together?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

We didn’t pursue that because we had enough patients of our own. We didn’t need any others. You always—it gets into issues of one person wants to do one thing and you want to do something else and all that kind of stuff. So here in the United States, the institutions that did this had large enough centers that they could do their own study. Now, some of them didn’t have as large a center as we did, but they had at least 75% of the population that we had. So I think the basic issue was that none of them really felt like they wanted to do cooperative work. Now, if you’re doing them by yourself, then you had the freedom to do what you wanted to do, write the papers, and so on a so forth. There weren’t any collaborative groups, at least not any that we participated in.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Interesting. Now, you mentioned that you had gone overseas a number of times to lecture. I know that actually, international activities were a pretty big part of what you did. I was going through your CV, and you had connections with the UK, Canada, Peru, Costa Rica, Brazil, Brussels, and the Multinational Association of Supportive Care. Was international outreach an important thing for you?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Part of the importance of it was I got the opportunity to go and see some other countries.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I know. That’s cool.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

But yeah, it’s nice to have interactions with these people working in the same area in other countries. I had some—these people were friends of mine over the years. We never had any collaborative studies, but we had interests in the same drugs sometimes and so forth. I must say that most of the lecturing was in a one-way direction. There weren’t too many times that they were invited over here. The one advantage that I had was that we had a much larger population than most of these European institutions. The other thing was, too, that the pharmaceutical companies footed the bill. They were interested in having me go and tell other people what our experience was with their new drug or something. So that played a role as well.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Did you find that the US work was more advanced in comparison to the work being done in Europe?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

No. I mean, there may have been some occasions where that was true. We may have been ahead of the others, and we got an earlier start at it, but the people who were working in this field specifically were just as qualified as we were, and they knew what to do and did it properly.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Were there any instances in which you felt you really learned something significant or had some kind of impact from going overseas, either on your work or in a more personal way?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Well, it was beneficial to get to know some of these people. I mean, I’m still—not so much now anymore, but Dr. Klastersky in Brussels and I had a good relationship over the years, and there were a couple others likewise. I don’t know that he learned anything from me or I learned anything from him that was all that important, but it was encouraging to see that you were getting similar kinds of results with the drugs and so on. I think that was worthwhile. Then of course there are international medical organizations. One is the International Cancer Chemotherapy Group. They have a meeting I used to go to the regularly. I think it was every other year or something. People would come from all over to present material. So there was always some interchange between what was going on in Europe and here in the United States.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Let’s talk about your activities after you retired, because you told me when we first sat down that you actually kept going into MD Anderson even after your formal retirement date of 1995. So tell me what you were involved in.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

I don’t think that’s terribly interesting. I didn’t do anything very dramatic. I would go in and participate in some of their meetings and so on and meet with individuals. Sometimes somebody wanted my input into some study they wanted to do or something like that. I still gave lectures for several years after I retired. I gave my last lecture this year. I said, “Now, this is it.” I gave a lecture at the Infectious Diseases Society of America meeting in Boston. I said that was the last time I was doing that. I’ve sort of hung up my hat now. Right now—this past year had been a little unkind to me in terms of some health matters I won’t go into. I am at the point now where I’m kind of looking at what I might be able to do with some of my time, but it would be more related to the activities of the church or something like that. I’ve closed the door down there. What happened was that—you know—it’s twenty-five miles down to MD Anderson from here, and I would drive down there and go in my office area and nobody was there. Nobody would be there all day because the amount of patient care work, I think, has increased substantially. When I was there—most of the time I was there—while I was taking care of patients, I still had a couple hours a day that I could work in the laboratory or write a paper or whatever. Of course, I did an awful lot of writing at home at nighttime too. I would guess maybe somewhere around 50% of my publications were actually written during off hours. But it got to the point that I was going down there, and there was nobody to talk to or anything. I thought, “Well, this is kind of crazy to drive twenty-five miles down there and sit and look at the wall.”

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Sure.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

So that’s when I sort of, kind of reluctantly, decided it’s time to terminate things.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

To what do you attribute that? I mean, you said a vast increase in the responsibilities of patient care, but why did that come about, do you think?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

The institution has grown, and not only in terms of the hospital patients themselves, but the outpatient program has really expanded. I hadn’t been down for a while, and I go down, and here’s this whole new building just for outpatients. We didn’t have anything like that when I was working. I think that’s probably—I don’t have the figures, and I haven’t seen the figures, but I would assume that a large part of this is a major increase in outpatient services. So if people are in Infectious Diseases and they have to go and have clinics to take care of these patients, sometimes you have to drop everything and go somewhere because the patient’s there now and he’s going back to Timbuktu—that sort of thing. It had to do with the size of the institution, the number of patients, and so on.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

What other changes in the institution did you notice? You were involved for a very long period of time and saw it grow even during that span from 1966 to 1995.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

That is the thing. The institution has grown so much over the years that it’s just amazing to me. I mean, there are areas of the institutions I’ve never been in, and then they have several other buildings. As I mentioned before, the outpatient burden has gotten much, much greater than it had been. So I don’t have any—have not seen any figures in terms of how many patients they’re seeing compared to what they saw ten years ago, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s been a major increase.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Was there a change in atmosphere or culture, even from the time you began until the time you retired?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Not too much during that time, no. Somewhat, because again, even over that period, the institution had expanded. But from what people tell me, there’s been a major change now. The thing has mushroomed.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

The corporatization and—we’re almost to two hours, would you like to stop for today and restart?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Well, I think I better. My voice is beginning to sound a little raspy.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

All right. Well, we don’t want that to happen. You need to go get some ice cream or something.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Next time I need to have some water.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

I’m sorry. I should have—

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

That’s all right.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

Here you go. I haven’t had a drink. So help yourself.

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

Well, you take it now. I can get some more.

Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:

All right. Did you have something else you wanted to say?

Gerald P. Bodey Sr., MD:

No, not really. I don’t know if you want to get into issues of where I traveled and that sort of thing, but you have my curriculum vitae and that tells pretty much everything that’s important. The one thing that’s happened this year that pleased me was that I was selected as the Distinguished Alumnus of my last year at Hopkins. Now, that isn’t saying very much, because at this point in time half of the people have died already. I had to wait this long in order to get it, but it’s nice. (End of Audio Session 1)

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Chapter: 05 Outreach Overseas and Some Post-Retirement Activities

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