Biographical Memoirs Volume 87 (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Donald Shard Fredrickson
Donald Shard Fredrickson
Pages 164-179
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Bachrach Fabian by Photo
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An event in medical school profoundly changed his life. During a third-year elective he met a Dutch anesthesiologist Reprinted from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (vol.
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Following graduation from medical school Fredrickson undertook residency and fellowship training in internal medicine under George Thorn at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and then spent one year in the laboratory of Ivan Frantz, a cholesterol biochemist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In July l953, Don moved to the National Heart Institute (NHI)
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From page 167... ...
as an international standard by the World Health Organization in l972 focused attention of physicians around the globe on these common abnormalities. In 1970 the NHI established a national Lipid Research Clinic Program headed by Robert Levy, one purpose of which was to evaluate the effect of lipid lowering on coronary heart disease.
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From page 168... ...
In 1966 he was elevated to chief of the Metabolic Disease Branch and also appointed director of the National Heart Institute, a virtually full-time position involving major interactions with the extramural research community and frequent appearances before Congress on policy and budget matters affecting NHI. He relinquished the institute directorship after two years in order to spend more time in research and to serve in a less demanding administrative position as director of intramural research in the recently renamed National Heart and Lung Institute.
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At a Gordon Conference in the summer of 1973, several scientists had presented reports on the technical ability to join together covalently DNA molecules from diverse sources to create hybrid plasmids or viruses whose biological activity was unpredictable. Following this meeting a conference-approved letter was sent to the president of the National Academy of Sciences expressing great concern over potential risks of recombinant research.
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On the final day of the conference, by coincidence, the new NIH Recombinant DNA Molecule Program Advisory Committee held its first meeting on the other side of the country in Bethesda, Maryland. This frenetic activity among scientists concerning a new technology with unknown risks -- thought negligible by some, fearsome by others -- was well publicized and created considerable public apprehension.
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From page 171... ...
In this fractious setting, Fredrickson made decisions he then had to sell or defend to the secretary of HEW and the Congress. In June 1976, with the approval of the secretary, NIH released guidelines for recombinant DNA research designed to ensure that all NIH-supported recombinant research conformed to stringent safety rules and to prohibit deliberate release of organisms containing recombinant DNA into the environment.
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From page 172... ...
While many observers regard Fredrickson's skillful handling of the recombinant DNA research safety controversy as his greatest contribution as director, at least one student of NIH (Bradie Metheny) considers Fredrickson's successful defense of the general authorization of the NIH, contained in the Public Health Service Act of 1944, against attempts by Congressman Waxman to abolish that provision in favor of mandatory annual congressional authorizations, as a triumph of even greater consequence for NIH and biomedical research.
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The huge proceeds of the sale of the aircraft company to General Motors provided a $5 billion endowment for the institute, and enabled the institute to relocate from Coral Gables, Florida, to Chevy Chase, Maryland (to a beautiful site suggested by Mrs. Fredrickson)
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Among his patients in the Lipid Clinic were some of his original study subjects with Tangier Disease. In the late 1990s Fredrickson coauthored three research publications in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which the molecular basis of the genetic defect of Tangier Disease was at last defined, almost 40 years after he described the entity.
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These include three volumes of speeches, articles and selected papers; twelve volumes of diaries relating to his years as physician to King Hassan II; other diaries kept for nine years as a director of Colange, Ltd., a private family-owned European company; twelve "Green Diaries" from the NIH directorship period; and travel summaries from 1960 onward. His was an extraordinary life of remarkable personal achievement and distinguished public service, a life lived with elan and lofty purpose.
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Perpich (in Biotechnology in Society, Private Initiatives and Public Oversight, ed. Joseph G
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The inheritance of high density lipoprotein deficiency (Tangier Disease)
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Levy. Neuropathy in Tangier disease: a-lipoprotein deficiency manifesting as familial recurrent neuropathy and intestinal lipid storage.
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Human ATP-binding cassette transporter (ABC 1) ; ZZ genomic organiza tion and identification of the genetic defect in the original Tangier disease kindred.
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