Bicentennial Voices

As Tuskegee and Nuremburg focused attention on research ethics, Yale School of Medicine Professor Robert Levine helped craft guidelines that are still used to protect human subjects.

Yale researcher Dorothy Horstmann made seminal discoveries about the course of polio that supported the ultimate development of a vaccine. Her former mentee, George Miller reflects on Horstmann’s science and life. Deputy Dean Carolyn Slayman talks about Horstmann’s groundbreaking role as a woman in medicine.

Stem cell researcher Haifan Lin talks about two centuries of cooperation between the Yale School of Medicine and China. Exchanges have helped to educate leaders in the world’s most populous nation and also infused Yale’s campus with brilliant young Chinese researchers.

Beatrix McCleary Hamburg, M.D., was the first African American women to attend Yale School of Medicine. After graduation in 1948 and training in child psychiatry, her research and clinical practice focused on behavioral and developmental issues among adolescents, especially minority children. In her early research, she was drawn to problems of teenage violence and bullying. Her insights led to the development of novel, school-based peer counseling programs that proved to be effective interventions and since have been widely applied in conflict resolution work. In 1992 she began a six-year term as president of the William T. Grant Foundation, where she supported funding promoting research to foster healthy lives and reduce violence among children. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1979 and is the mother of the current commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration, Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.

Dr. Michael Kashgarian reflects on Dean Milton Winternitz’s reforms at the Yale School of Medicine. Winternitz gave students unprecedented freedom to follow their own interests, a system that still distinguishes medical education at Yale.

The Second Year Show is a beloved tradition at the Yale School of Medicine, a chance for students to – lovingly – poke fun at the faculty. Class of 2013’s Charisse Mandimika talks about the latest incarnation of the show.

Yale School of Medicine professors discovered that chemicals used in gas warfare during the first world war could be a potent weapon against cancer. Cancer Center Director Thomas Lynch describes how chemotherapy was invented at Yale and how scientists continue to develop these treatments to increase their effectiveness.

Paul Beeson was renowned for his excellence and compassion as a clinician, his groundbreaking insight as a researcher and his kindly exactitude as an educator. John Forrest, one of Beeson’s last interns, talks about how his mentor managed to do so much so extraordinarily well.

Drs. Robert Sherwin and William Tamborlane describe their development of the insulin pump, which revolutionized diabetes treatment. By delivering a non-stop, adjustable stream of insulin they were able to spare patients the worst complications of the disease.

Dr. Vincent Quagliarello tells the dramatic story of the first American life saved by penicillin, a woman who developed an infection after giving birth in New Haven. Yale School of Medicine faculty were able to get the lifesaving new drug to the woman and played a large role in the development of the antibiotic for mass use.