Albert Lasker
Clinical Medical Research Award
Michael DeBakey
For his brilliant leadership and professional accomplishments, which were responsible in a large measure for inaugurating a new era in cardiovascular surgery.
Believing that modern technological developments and the discovery and commercial production of synthetic materials could be applied to the solution of problems of cardiovascular disease hitherto regarded as incurable, Dr. DeBakey began, 30 years ago, to perfect new techniques in the surgical laboratory which might be applied for the benefit of man. Among his early accomplishments was the devising of a roller-type pump that produced minimal trauma to the blood elements. This invention, widely used for its original purpose, stimulated research which was suggested a decade later to Dr. John H. Gibbon for use in his artificial heart-lung apparatus.
Dr. DeBakey's research led him to develop methods of repairing diseased or clot-obstructed blood vessels by the use of replacements of preserved human blood vessels, and later, of artificial blood vessels composed of Dacron or other synthetic materials. With surgical procedures characterized by extraordinary skill, replacement of blood vessels in many parts of the body was accomplished, including the largest artery in the body, the aorta, and the smaller blood vessels located in portions of the body which had hitherto defied successful surgical intervention.
His pioneer contributions include the first successful surgical treatment of aneurysms of various parts of the aorta. Aneurysms are responsible for grave disability when they obstruct the flow of blood, or for sudden death when rupture occurs in the pathologically thinned blood vessel wall, which balloons at the point where the muscular wall is diseased or destroyed.
Large numbers of people have been returned to useful and productive lives with the knowledge that not only had sudden death been averted, but that continuity of the circulation has been restored to permit normal function of organs in the body, or the limbs or the brain.
Additional courageous and even daring surgical procedures, based upon sound laboratory research, have since opened new possibilities for the treatment and even the prevention of some forms of stroke.
His contributions have inspired surgeons throughout the world to higher standards and greater achievements; they honor him, as we do today, as a trail blazer, a medical statesman, and a master surgeon.
Charles Huggins
For his role as a catalyst in modern endocrine studies of tumor control in animals and humans.
Dr. Charles Huggins's career exemplifies the highest achievement in the application of biological science to human welfare. An inspired and persevering investigator, he has exhibited remarkable insight into basic problems, and an extraordinary versatility in turning from the laboratory to the clinic and, finally, to the operating room. His intensive studies of prostate function in animals constitute a classic chapter in the history of medicine.
Before 1940 he was responsible for the first demonstration of competitive inhibition of male sex hormone action by female sex hormone. His observations on dogs led him, in 1940, to initiate the use of the female sex hormone in the treatment of cancer of the prostate in man. With this treatment, about 95 percent of men with cancer of the prostate derive benefit, varying in duration from 6 months to 20 years, after evidence of metastases has been demonstrated. Recent studies have shown that in men with cancer of the prostate, without evidence of metastases treated by either castration or female hormone administration, survivals of 5 years or more were obtained in 44 percent of cases, compared with 5 year survivals in only 10 percent of patients not so treated. This discovery was the first proof that a hormone—a medicine or chemical taken by mouth—could affect any form of cancer in man even for a short period of time, and inspired the active search for hormone and hormone-related chemicals for the control of other forms of cancer.
In 1951, these endocrine studies led Dr. Huggins to demonstrate the beneficial effects of removal of both adrenal glands in women with far advanced breast cancer which had spread to other parts of the body. In his hands, 40 percent of such patients have had temporary benefit from this operation, with increase in survival from 18 months to 10 years.
Dr. Huggins has in recent years turned his attention to the control of growth of breast cancer by steroidal substances. Almost all of the new tumor growth-controlling steroids now used were first revealed by Dr. Huggins in animal tests.
Besides acting as the imagination and catalyst to modern endocrine studies and tumor control in animals and men, he has established, in the Ben May Laboratory, a world-renowned center for research from which have emerged important discoveries in fundamental biology and a steady stream of brilliant young biochemists. Dr. Huggins is in spirit young, in humanity generous, and in achievement magnificent.