TOWER 297we could have started on such a high note, such a golden-age approach,
if we had not had this opportunity to bring top-flight people to Bethesda.
To the Montreal contingent should be added: Giovanni DiChiro (neu
roradiology), Paul O. Chatfield (neurophysiology), and Laurence L.
Frost (neuropsychology).
In addition, we should not overlook the basic neuroscientists who
regularly interacted with their clinical colleagues: Kenneth S. Cole
(Laboratory of Biophysics), Wade H. Marshall (NIMH Laboratory of
Neurophysiology), Karl Frank (Section on Spinal Cord Physiology,
within Marshall’s Laboratory of Neurophysiology), William F. Windle
(Laboratory of Neuroanatomical Sciences), Jan Cammermeyer (Sec
tion on Experimental Neuropathology within Windle’s Laboratory of
Neuroanatomical Sciences), and Roscoe O. Brady (Section on Lipid
Chemistry, within the Laboratory of Neurochemistry).^2
There is a tendency to distinguish between clinical research and basic
research. I think that is wrong. In looking back over our programs, it
seems to me that there was a constant undulation in which at one point
you were in a clinical phase and at the next point in a research phase. It
would not have worked to get the answers that we sought and some of
which we got if we had not done it that way. I think of Brady’s program
as a prime example.
Brady started out looking at lipid storage diseases (lipodystrophies).
He spent a long time with a good many people in his laboratory to de
fine the fact that these diseases were due to genetic absence or genetic
attenuation of various key degradative enzymes. And he went on to study
Tay-Sachs disease, Gaucher disease, Niemann-Pick disease, and a number
of others from the standpoint of trying to achieve enzyme replacement.
So here we are starting out with a completely basic research program and
no patients. Then you moved to patients who would donate tissue
samples to see if you could find what was wrong in their enzymology.
And then you moved to a ward of patients where you were trying to
treat them by replacing the missing enzyme. And it worked. As far as I
know, this is one of few programs that has worked from such historic
starts to finishes. Many have tried but only a very few have succeeded.
We also had opportunities during the 1950s to learn ourselves. I
remember Shy and I went down to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the Oak