Medical research; Research needs and future training

The following program is produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant of aid from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters on the two final programs of this segment of our series. We're going to hear from many of the persons whom I interviewed on the subject of research needs and future training and the public and communication in medical research. Today's program research needs and future training. A program from the series human behavior social and medical research produced by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service. These programs have been developed from interviews with men and women who have the too often unglamorous job of basic research. Research in medicine the physical sciences the social sciences and the behavioral sciences. OK Janelle you will hear what may seem like strange or unfamiliar sobs. These are the sounds of the participants office his laboratory or his clinic where the

interviews were first conducted. The people you will hear today are Dr. John Givens Jr. Dr. Willis pot Doctor Jerome t separately Dr. John F. Ender's Dr. Randall Spragg Dr. Julius L. Wilson and Dr. Roger as Mitchell. Also Dr. Ernest Runnion. Dr. Gardner Middlebrook and Dr. Saul Roy Rosenthal. And my name is Glenn Phillips. Over the past weeks we have heard some optimistic reports on the medical research throughout the United States. What are some of the research needs that still must be met by our medical scientists. They answer for themselves. First Dr. Randall Spragg of the Mayo Clinic. There are many pressing problems. Those that come to my mind first in spite of my great interest and beat us in the need for research in this field are mental illness cancer

heart and cardiovascular disease. Infectious diseases including the whole problem of the development of resistance by certain organisms to biopics and then of course diabetes US ranks very high on my list of areas needing concentrated investigation. Dr John C. givens of the Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia said I would probably and I could only speak about this country. We have the methods of controlling diseases and mounted pressure in countries which are not as economically as well off as United States. We have these we know how to control cholera we know how to control the skeeters with malaria and so

forth. We know how to control my own attrition with good food. But in this country there's plenty of good food and economical conditions are all right where we have gradually elect to buy colossus that isn't completely eliminated the natural diseases way down we have the drugs to control what we have had to add to good publicity now about the new disease for maybe 20 or 30 years which we didn't used to have. But. There are things that we still desperately need to know about our Probably I would say number one sclerosis and hardening the arteries This is the major reason people die. If this didn't occur who knows how long people would live. I would say that or perhaps it's it's close second was cancer.

We've got to be able to find out why cells grow under a strain that lay in certain parts of the body and that's all cancer is. And we've got to find methods of detection early detection and methods of being able to get rid of these most of this growth which is composed of cells and sort of the patient go and live their life. I would say those were the two main areas in which research is desperately needed in this country. And Dr. Willis pots of the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago Zebo most important thing to be found out is what causes congenital heart defects. Why does Mrs. Jones Smith Brown have four five normal children and then have a child with congenital heart disease. That is the great mystery.

We simply do not know why these congenital deformities occur. Let somebody find that out. And I am all through talking. We just have no more surgery to do and that would be wonderful. As far as surgery is concerned I mean the implication of your question is what would be like in surgery. Well I suppose that one of the big advances would be Joe I say rivers of blood. And. Artificial blood so that we wouldn't have to go through the tremendous trouble and expense. Of Getting blood for every patient who has an open heart operation. You see we have to have from 6 to 10 pints of blood for every case in order to prime the pump and fill up the oxygen Nadir and that is going to and from the patient.

An artificial blood. Would be a godsend as long as we have to do this surgery. That would be her greatest help. Where is that in the horizon. I don't know. I don't know. That was going to be my question. Is it in the Koran or is it on the right it isn't. It is not the horizon where I can see it. I don't know whether it's possible it's very stupid to say that anything isn't possible because soon as you say that somebody finds out it is possible. But it's very difficult to see how one can find a blood substitute which will carry oxygen to the tissues. After all red cells have been doing that for quite a few 100 million years and. Somebody has got to find something that's as good as a red blood cell to carry oxygen. To the brain and do the all the tissues during the time that the heart is not functioning.

Dr. Jerome to you simpleton of the University of Minnesota the most pressing problem you would seem relating to human health that need more concentrated research probably are those of mental health and cardiovascular disease cancer would be included with these problems. If it were not already receiving concentrated attention. Of course no amount of research is concentrated enough until the solution is attained. It is worth noting that the problem of the repopulation. And hence of controlling the population growth must be related to these other problems when we succeed in decreasing the maternity rate from cancer and cardiovascular disease and decrease the rate of debilitation for mental disease. The problem of population density will be enormously enhanced if we ever succeed in reducing cancer and cardiovascular disease as prizes

of human mortality to the same extent that we have the past influence of infectious disease. We have no way of knowing however and the lifespan and particularly the active life span of human beings may be at Harvard University Dr John F. Anderson said. Perhaps I would like to know best. The details of the mechanism the way in which virus in other way alter the shells in which they live and multiply. This is the changes that ultimately lead to the

organism as a whole. Dr. Julius Wilson of the American Trudeau society said we have in treating tuberculosis and having a problem when one serious difficulty and that is I'm like self-limited diseases like typhoid smallpox chicken pox hooping cough whatnot. There's no end point on a disease you never know when you're through treating it. We need to test our method of determining when an individual has been successfully treated and set up within his own body his own defense mechanisms to in such a way that he will not break down again. We don't need to test right now to find out whether a person has tuberculosis we can do that. But after we have given treatment for two yes no matter what form that treatment is chemical or medical surgical we ought to have some kind of a test which will tell us that John Smith has developed a

high degree of immunity and now can carry on safely. Mary Jones on the other hand we need to watch more carefully we need to continue on eyes and eyes and we need to keep her from any stress and strain this kind of a test we did not have and this is Emmett desirable. In the very nature of tuberculosis I'm not sure whether this is possible but it's the kind of thing we need is to know when we're through with the treatment. As things stand today we're never through with it as long as the individual lives. And one way we have to follow them for life and very carefully. Dr. Roger Mitchell of the University of Colorado. We need to know. Basically the mechanism of origin single cell its growth and its death. What causes changes in it. That is genetics. What causes it to resist

or be susceptible to disease. This is immunology and of course if you go into the fields of diseases I have little doubt that the biggest challenge today is mental health. I don't wish to deprecate the importance of more knowledge in tuberculosis. This is my major interest. That and emphysema or chronic lung crippling if you will. We need to know how to treat TB more quickly or effectively. And we need to know how to prevent long crippling. But I would say mental health is that one of the major problems. And being sure that the present trend to dieting to prevent partner the arteries are more about the nature of this profound. Killer and disable or hardening the arteries. But I think we're going to get out

all of these things more effectively if we work at the basic level basic knowledge about the chemistry particularly of cell growth and death. Dr. Ernest Runnion of the veterans hospital in Salt Lake City. Perhaps the most important lack in our ability to cope with this disease is the lack of knowing how to determine when to begin to spread and multiply in the body. We have the regular test which is a very sensitive indication that typical because I have gained access to the body and have presumably multiplied to a certain extent this usually comes at a time when there is

no illness whatsoever or any X-ray evidence of disease. So I then may spread and do a very considerable degree of damage little by little which is only recognised very much later. At that time a patient may feel easily fatigued and may have lost weight and poor appetite and other vague symptoms and may go to a doctor for examination and yes he has a lesion in his lung and treatment may then be started. This treatment is fairly effective but it would be would have been very much more effective if it had been given

promptly as soon as the tube so I started to spread and started to multiply. When this occurs. Is the time when treatment should be given. We have good drugs to control the disease. If we could give them promptly we do not know. We do not have good signs good indications when. To break up a cell I first began to spread and multiply in the body. And this is Dr. Gardner Middlebrook of the National Jewish Hospital in Denver. The most pressing problem is to get more enough people trained to be able to carry on the research that the public feels should be carried on. Perhaps your question was not directly oriented in that for to get that

answer but I think it's a very important answer and it's an important aspect of the problem of medical research which I would like to stress for a reason for the reason that there are many more. Opportunities offered for people to work. There are many more questions that are being asked. Then there are people who have time to work to answer them. There is also a problem of training. Imaginative stimulating imaginative creative individuals to go into medical science into the biological sciences. One of the ways of course to increase the number would be to increase the remunerate the financial remuneration which is provided

in such careers. Those are only some of the many areas of which I was told that need concentrated research in the medical sciences. What will be needed in the future. This one specular Defensor regarding more interplay between the various special days was given by Dr Middlebrook. I can cite as an example. My own interest in the need for collaboration between the social scientists the psycho social scientists who are concerned with motivating human beings to submit themselves to preventive measures in relation to health. Or therapeutic measures. We scientists who work in the laboratories are devising new drugs new vaccines. New treatments for. Diseases trying to devise new methods of preventing diseases. But unless working

along with us they are not with us but looking along in their own with their own goal in mind namely trying to learn more about the motivation of human beings. And that's the psychosocial scientists. Can. Devise methods to make human beings want to be well. Or want to get well. It seems to me that our work is. Diminished its impact will be diminished. And I think it's just as important to be concerned with the in medical sciences just as a point to be concerned with the way in which any new observation will be applied. And with the mechanisms which are necessary to get such new observations new methods of treatment or prevention of disease applied as it is simply to

work. So I have been in an ivory tower. Without recognizing that. Sooner or later. Not only is it the public's goal in supporting medical research but indeed it's our own goal and we must admit it. No matter what aspect of biology or medical science we're working in it's our own goal that sometime or other. What we are doing will have importance in. Improving the health the well-being of our fellow man. Doctored your own certain comments first on our next question. Is training adequate. And what will be needed in future medical training. For another profession was adequate to the

medical training was not adequate at the time when training was to be in the draft. I would strongly that the adequacy of training depends on limited energy and in the capacity of an individual to absorb the information. It seems probable that people going under the medical profession can expect to thirst a necessity of increasing training periods of training and demand for increasing experience as a member of recognized diseases and treatment increases. Doctors must spend more time in training and receive diversified training. Once again Dr. John F. Anders welly. How do you predict how would you like to go I would hope it would become more and more preventive medicine.

Both physical and mental illness rather than therapeutic medicine that is prevention rather than cure. And I think that as knowledge vanishes it came and she did become more preventive will prevail and we will know how to prevent it and better than we do at the moment. Dr. Saul Roy Rosenthal said one thing it seems to me that has to be changed is that their ultimate goal and what they want out of becoming a doctor. Or a man in research. It should be not materialistic. It should be on the basis of doing good for someone else. No less a man than bacon proposes way back in the 17th century. But.

Even then he was afraid that much education or much learning. Was done for. All to your motives and for personal gains rather than for service to mankind. Dr. Randall Sprague said at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota I think great demands will be my it upon people going into the medical profession in the future. First of all with knowledge of medicine expanding in a geometric fashion there will be much more of that. The future doctor must learn and he will have to have more intensive and perhaps even more prolonged training that he now has. Furthermore I feel that the people

and the doctor of the future have more and greater qualities of warmth and human understanding and dealing with sick people and many of our. Present highly trained doctors in the scientific sense. I have Dr. James Waring of the University of Colorado Curry Dr. Spraggs feelings a bit further. Of course I feel. That the medical profession is. Is a. Is a dedicated profession. I feel that the young man that nose into this profession should be influenced by his desire to relieve human suffering and to do good. Just speaking just broadly and in general terms that he shouldn't go into it because of of ambition and because of the money that he's going to make out of it.

You should go into it because he has the get a good feeling about the thing he's interested he has an inquiring mind in the first place and having an inquiring mind leads him to do. To be a good diagnostician. Because a patient has symptoms and he has to have an inquiring mind as to why the patient has those symptoms and that leads him to make a diagnosis and then that leads him to the problem of proper treatment. So that the inquiring mind is one thing and a very important thing and that they are dedicated to feeling do you see. I was reading a paper last night and it said that it referred to the fact that the doctor must be in his profession because he loves his profession do you see. And I think that that is is the right attitude.

Now you can find this. You can find levels of culture in the young man. I think much of it comes from the training that he gets in his own home. What his parents are like and what they're not like I think all of those environmental influences in his youth very important to him and then I think the environmental influences in medical school rushed in so I went to Johns Hopkins Medical School and I was there in the days when the four great doctors and Welsh hosted and Kelly the heads of the important departments in medical school and the influence especially Dr.

Mae over the years as as carried right on up to this very moment you see. And I think I don't let that influence must be exercised on the medical student by his professors and by his teachers. And I would go back even further than that. My mother was a school teacher she had taught school had money enough to send me off to college and to medical school you see. I think the influence of their elementary school teacher the secondary school the high school teacher I think the influence of these persons upon their students and their people. Not just in the way of encouraging them to read and see but in the way of their social and human understanding.

Stimulating their interest in social and economic problems. The U.S. as well as in just the immediate task of answering a question and passing the examination DSE. We have heard a group of the country's leading medical authorities as they commented on research needs of tomorrow and the future training for medicine. Those people were Dr. John H. Givens Jr. of the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Willis Potts of the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Jerome t Severson of the University of Minnesota and Dr. John Enders of Harvard University also Dr. Randall Sprague of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. Dr. Julius L. Wilson of the American Trudeau society and Dr. Roger S. Mitchell and Dr. James Waring of the University of Colorado from Salt Lake City at the Veterans Hospital we heard Dr. Ernest Runnion and from the National Jewish Hospital. Dr. Gardner

Middlebrook in Denver and Dr. Saul Roy Rosenthal from Chicago. Next week you will hear Dr. Givens Dr. 7 Dr. spray Dr. Lukens and Dr. Rosenthal joined by Dr. Denton Cooley Dr. WCC Lee Dr. Harry Levinson Dr. Leonard DOOL and Dr. Robert H. Felix as they comment on the public and communication in medical research on the next program from the series human behavior social and medical research. Glenn Phillips speaking asking that you join us next week and thanking you for being with us at this time. This program has been produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant in aid from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the NEA E.B. Radio Network.