In Memoriam
In Memoriam ANTHONY HORAN, MD Anthony Harding Horan, 80, died of cancer Aug. 13, 2020, at his home in Fresno, Calif., with his wife, Marcia Morrison, and son, Frank Horan, by his side. Tony was born in New York City to Francis Harding Horan and Elizabeth Rogers Horan in 1940. He spent his early years in the city and in Cornwall, where the family had a house. He attended St. Bernard’s, St. Paul’s, Dartmouth and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He spent two college summers pumping gas and fishing at Yellowstone National Park. During the second summer, he and his twin sister, Elizabeth, summited the Grand Teton on a guided climb. His climbing career peaked in 1967 when he was chosen as the expedition MD on the first American ascent of Mount McKinley’s Cassin route. Despite the fact that their climb took place during the largest storm in North American history, all 14 expedition members reached the summit. While in medical school at Columbia in 1962, Tony worked as a technician on a summer project for Roger Guillemin, MD, and Andrew Schally, Ph.D. Fifteen years later, that project earned Guillemin and Schally a Nobel Prize for the structure of luteinizing hormone releasing factor. Tony also spent five months on research at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Rather than pursuing a Ph.D. career, Tony aspired to become an MD scientist like his grandfather, John Rogers Jr., who graduated from Columbia P&S in 1892 and became a pioneer in the treatment of thyroid disease. After graduating from medical school, Tony completed a general medicine internship and a general surgery internship at St. Luke’s Hospital, followed by a urology residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, both in New York City. His training was interrupted by the Vietnam War and he served as an Air Force general surgeon in Cam Rahn Bay during the Tet offensive of 1967-1968. During his urology residency, Tony performed the first voluntary vasoligation ever performed at Columbia Presbyterian on a charity patient. He won first prizes for papers on human spermatozoa motility before establishing a private practice in New York. In the 1980s, Tony joined the VA system as a urologist in
Fall 2020
Walla Walla, Wash., and later transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Fresno. While at the VA, he published a paper on mean time to death from prostate cancer, which contested what he considered a world-wide epidemic of radical prostatectomies. This topic was the subject of his 2009 book, “The Big Scare,” which was revised and republished in 2017 as “The Rise and Fall of the Prostate Cancer Hoax.” After retiring from the VA system, Tony established a private practice in Evanston, Wyo., and later in Delano, Calif., where he had the opportunity to aid many adult and pediatric patients with untreated congenital malformations. He contributed to medical science for 30 years as an active member of the Western Section of the American Urological Association, during which he gave 59 conference presentations and had 49 peerreviewed publications. Tony was a surgeon and he was also an artist. He was a member of The Century Association of New York, where he exhibited paintings, and he joined community chorales in Walla Walla and Fresno. He and his wife, Marcia Morrison, were avid backpackers in the Western U.S., particularly in the Sierra Nevada. During the winter, Tony loved skiing, both downhill and cross-country, with any family members who could keep up with him. Until his last months of life, Tony enjoyed tennis, golf and reading Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” in French. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, T. Bramwell Welch-Horan, MD, and daughter-in-law, Jessica Merrill Horan; his grandchildren, Charlie, Oliver and Phoebe Horan of Houston, Texas; and his younger son, Francis H. Horan of Fresno. He is also survived by his brother, John Rogers Horan, and sister, Honora Horan, of Washington and Cornwall, respectively; and his twin sister, Elizabeth Horan Edgerly of Rhode Island.
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