I only have one biological relationship uncle - my Uncle Arnie. (All of my other uncles are through marriage.) My father's brother lives amongst the rest of the Berk clan in Los Angeles. Today, December 23, 2009 happens to be my "blood uncle" Arnie's birthday and he turns 60.
So what's with the biology and blood references above? I'm glad you asked.
While the family knows Arnie as a sailor, opera buff and wine afficionado, the rest of the world knows him as the eminent Dr. Arnold Berk, one of the most well-regarded biologists in the country. Arnie is a cancer researcher who literally wrote the book on Molecular Cell Biology. The textbook is a biology campus "classic" - if you know anyone who has studied molecular biology, I can guarantee you they've read the book (or, at least, the exciting parts of it).
Arnie's resume makes all of us look small and stupid. He is a Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA. He's also one of the original discoverers of RNA splicing and mechanisms for gene control in viruses. His lab at UCLA studies "interactions of molecules that regulate transcription nitiation in mammalian cells" (whatever that means). While I'm not a scientist and understand very little about what Arnie does, I can proudly tell you that if there's a short-list of Nobel candidates in physiology and medicine, Arnie's on it. Really. Ask any world-class molecular biologist to name the world's Top 10 smartest micro-biologists.
Being the founder of GiftDay, you'd probably think it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to find a book about physiology for Arnie's 60th birthday. About that, you'd be right.
I'm curious who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine the year of Arnie's birth so I turn to Wikipedia where I learn that in 1949 Antonio Caetano du Abreu Freire Egas Moniz took home Portugal's first ever Nobel prize for discovering cerebral angiography. Besides having an incredibly long name to help him, Moniz or Egas Moniz or Caetano, essentially won the prize for his work in "introducing the controversial psychosurgical procedure leucotomy, otherwise known as a lobotomy."
Arnie's birth year, ironically enough, 1949, was a banner year for lobotomies. More lobotomies were performed in 1949 than in any other year. It was in medical vogue and the Nobel Committee decided that it needed to keep up with the times. (Certainly if the Nobel Committee were around in AD 180, they would have awarded the prize to Claude Gallen, a prominent Roman physician and researcher, specifically for his work in "blood-letting".)
Looking back now 60 years later we recognize that lobotomies have been "deplored by many as brutally arrogant". Wikipedia tells us that "collateral derision has been directed specifically at Moniz as the operation's innovator."
Digging a bit deeper though it appears for all intents and purpose that Moniz was unfairly labelled by history as a blood-letting quack; that it was doctors like Walter Freeman who sought to aggressively promote lobotomies "which led to its being performed in large numbers of cases now considered inappropriate."
I find the whole subject fascinating and head over to Amazon where I find dozens of books about lobotomies. There are dozens to choose from. But the book that grabs me more than any of the others is a book by Howard Dully called, appropriately enough, My Lobotomy.
According to Amazon: "At age 12, Dully received a transorbital (or ice pick lobotomy) from Dr. Walter Freeman, who invented the procedure, making Dully an unfortunate statistic in medical history—the youngest of the more than 10,000 patients who Freeman lobotomized to cure their supposed mental illness. In this brutally honest memoir, Dully describes how he set out 40 years later to find out why he was lobotomized... He also investigates the strange career of Freeman—who wasn't a licensed psychiatrist—including early acclaim by the New York Times and cross-country trips hawking the operation from his Lobotomobile."
Arnie is a well-read and thoughtful guy who appreciates a meaningful book. This GiftDay gift really is a "no-brainer".
Sorry for the sloppy joke Arnie. Happy Birthday anyway...
Much love,
Your Blood Nephew,
Jeffrey
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