DOI: 10.1097/01.COT.0000294566.47892.99
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Issn Print: 0276-2234
Publication Date: 2006/04/25
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Excerpt
The recipient of numerous awards, including the Lasker Medical Research Award in 1972 and the Alfred P. Sloan Award in 1963, he was honored the American Association for Cancer Research when it established the Joseph H. Burchenal Clinical Research Award in 1996 in recognition of those who have made significant contributions to the care of cancer patients. He served as AACR President from 1965–1966, and was elected an Honorary Member of the Association in 1987.
In addition to Dr. Burchenal's many contributions to the development of chemotherapy and cancer research, his long-time colleagues at MSK remembered him as a wonderful boss and mentor, and extraordinary individual, who never took an elevator, but rather ran several steps at a time, to and from his 11th floor office until retiring in the early 1980s.
Dr. Burchenal joined Memorial in the late 1940s when he, David Karnofsky, MD, and several other former Army physicians were recruited C.P. “Dusty” Rhoads, MD, as part of Memorial's Chemotherapy Service.
Dr. Burchenal had served as Chief of Infectious Disease at the Harvard Fifth General Hospital in Europe and Chief of Tropical Medicine at Walter Reed Hospital during World War II. In those days, the term chemotherapy was used primarily when identifying methods to treat malaria, syphilis, and bacterial infections.
At Memorial, his work with 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) resulted in the first long-term remissions of acute leukemia in children, and he was among the clinicians there who helped introduce the earliest classes of chemotherapy, including nitrogen mustards, oral alkylating agents, and folate antagonists.
In the 1960s, when he was Chief of Clinical Chemotherapy, he collaborated with Denis P. Burkitt, MD, Herbert Oettgen, MD, and Peter Clifford, MD, in developing treatments for patients in Africa suffering from head and neck cancers that would be known as Burkitt's lymphoma. It was for this work that he shared the Lasker Award with 14 others.
Bayard “Barney” D. Clarkson, MD, a Member at MSK, was hired Dr. Burchenal as a full-time fellow in 1958.
During a telephone interview Dr. Clarkson explained, “At that time Memorial was the only show in town using chemotherapy. Not many believed in chemotherapy back then because nothing worked. The surgeons used to make fun of us since we couldn't cure many people.”
Of course, that was to change.
“Joe was a wonderful boss, he was full of ideas, and always looking for whatever was new. We all loved Joe.”
Jimmie C. Holland, MD, the Wayne E. Chapman Chair in Psychiatric Oncology at MSK, first encountered Dr. Burchenal professionally when she joined the cancer center in 1977, and went to see him in his capacity as head of the institutional review board.
She said she had known Dr. Burchenal previously since he was good friends with her husband James Holland, MD, who was among the clinicians who joined Dr. Burchenal on his travels to Africa. She added that she and Jim used to tease Joe about his middle name, which happened to be Holland.
