Greenwich woman helping father get recognition

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Greenwich woman helping father get recognition

By Lisa Chamoff Updated June 16, 2012 9:40 p.m.

Barbara Hertz looks at a poster of her father Saul Hertz in her Greenwich home Monday, June 11, 2012.

Greenwich resident Barbara Hertz's father died when she was 3, but she eventually learned that he had discovered the use of radioactive iodine as a treatment for thyroid cancer.

Helen Neafsey

Barbara Hertz never got to know her father, a man who helped save the lives of countless people.

Now the Greenwich resident is making sure that others know of her father's contribution to medicine.

Saul Hertz died of a heart attack in 1950, when Barbara was 3 years old.

Growing up in Brookline, Mass., Barbara Hertz heard family members mention her father's discovery that radioactive iodine would treat a disease, but she never really understood the significance of it.

It turns out that a question her father posed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's president during a lecture -- Could iodine be made artificially radioactive? -- led him to study the substance and, eventually, its use to treat, and cure, thyroid cancer.

After her mother died in 2000, Hertz began sorting through the clutter in the home where she had grown up, coming across boxes in the attic with documents from her father's research. She found a letter from his boss at Massachusetts General Hospital recounting how Hertz asked the seminal question. She then searched the Internet and found her father's name was missing from the major articles about radioactive iodine.

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Hertz, who worked as a special education teacher in Greenwich Public Schools and now runs a tutoring business, has set about promoting her father's work with a website -- www.saulhertzmd.com -- and wrote a 2010 article in the journal Endocrine Practice.

"I think that it is inspirational for young people, having been a teacher all these years," Hertz said. "I think it's inspirational to know that from one seminal question ... came this exploration and discovery that was so important. It's basically why should you learn about history."

Saul Hertz had graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1929, and later joined the Thyroid Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, serving as its chief for 12 years. In 1936, Hertz posed his question to then-MIT President Karl Compton, who was lecturing at Harvard Medical School's Vanderbilt Hall. That led to a collaboration between Mass General and MIT, and research that resulted in the use of radioactive iodine to treat Graves disease, an autoimmune disorder that leads to an overactive thyroid.

During World War II, Hertz joined the Navy Medical Corps, and contributed to research on medical uses of atomic energy. In 1949, after finishing his military service, Hertz founded the Radioactive Isotope Research Institute, to research the used of radioactive iodine to treat thyroid cancer. A headline in a 1949 article in the Harvard Crimson proclaims, "Hertz to Use Nuclear Fission in Cure for Cancer."

Because the thyroid absorbs iodine, the radioactivity is also absorbed, destroying the cancer cells. The radiation doesn't affect any other cells in the body.

Dr. David Cheng, chief of nuclear medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital, said they treat about six patients a week with radioactive iodine. About 90 percent of the patients have thyroid cancer, while the rest have issues such as Graves disease.

"It's just fortuitous because with the nature of the thyroid gland, it's a naturally targeted therapy for thyroid cancer," Cheng said.

Barbara says that as a Jew, her father overcame many obstacles to achieve what he did. A few years ago, in speaking with someone who was writing a book about Mass General -- the author's mother was from Greenwich -- Barbara learned that her father was one of only two Jewish doctors at the Boston hospital. She believes that this is why some literature overlooks her father's contribution.

"I think the real essence is someone who had this kind of limitation and this kind of brilliance was able to make this generous gift to the world despite all these challenges," Hertz said.

In January, Hertz organized a reception to honor her father at Vanderbilt Hall.

Thyroid specialists spoke of her father's discovery of radioactive iodine as a tracer, as the preferred treatment for Graves disease and the first targeted cancer treatment.

"Dr. Hertz's development of radioactive iodine therapy was a landmark," said Dr. Jeffrey Garber, an endocrinologist with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, who attended the event. "It was highly significant. It revolutionized the way people with overactive thyroids were treated."

Garber said that based on some correspondence he's seen from that time, there is evidence of anti-Semitism, but it's not clear whether Hertz was denied the recognition he was due because of it, or because of institutional politics.

"I couldn't really comment on it because I wasn't there," Garber said.

In the 1940s, there was an issue with a doctor from Mass General, who had taken over the work that Hertz had been doing when he left for the Navy, who wanted to publish an article on radioactive iodine therapy. Hertz and his colleague also wrote an article that was published in the same medical journal.

"There's no question that there was anti-Semitism in that era," Garber said. "It wasn't isolated. The whole Beth Israel hospital was open to give an opportunity for Jewish doctors to get trained. (Since then) every chief of every major medical institution in Boston has been Jewish."

Garber said he thinks there's a lesson in remembering the past, and making it relevant to today.

"Just don't repeat those sins," Garber said. "Don't overlook people who look different. Pick the best and the brightest and go with them."

For Barbara Hertz, the information she discovered about her father has made her come to understand and respect him.

"I got to really know him as a person going through his research," she said. "In a very strange way, it brought us together." lisa.chamoff@scni.com; 203-625-4439; http://twitter.com/lchamoff June 16, 2012 | Updated June 16, 2012 9:40 p.m.