Sidney Farber

Sidney Farber learned cancer from the dead. As the first full-time pathologist at Children's Hospital in Boston, appointed in 1929, he spent nearly two decades at the autopsy table and the microscope, writing the standard 1937 manual on postmortem technique and describing childhood diseases nobody had named. The route there had been indirect. Buffalo-born, the third of 14 children, he finished the University of Buffalo in 1923 and then ran into the quotas that kept Jewish students out of American medical schools, so he used his German to take his first year at Heidelberg and Freiburg before Harvard admitted him as a second-year student. He graduated in 1927. He was 44 before he treated a living child for cancer.

In November 1947 he gave aminopterin, a folate antagonist synthesized for him by Yellapragada Subbarow, to 16 children dying of acute leukemia. Ten went into temporary remission, and the paper he published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 3, 1948, is the beginning of chemotherapy. The second achievement was political. With the Variety Club of New England he built the Jimmy Fund, and with Mary Lasker he assembled the lobby that carried the National Cancer Institute's budget from 48 million dollars in 1957 to 176 million by 1967 and produced the National Cancer Act of 1971.

Every child in that first group died. The remissions ran weeks to months, and then the leukemia came back, and Farber knew that when he wrote the paper. He had tried folic acid itself first, which appeared to accelerate the disease, and reasoned from that to a drug that would starve the marrow instead. Colleagues called the work presumptuous, and some of them called it cruelty: a basement pathologist poisoning dying children to no purpose. In 1947 they had the outcomes on their side. What Farber had was the principle that a chemical could be aimed at a cancer, and it took two more decades of combination regimens built by other people before children began to survive. Both halves are true at once.

He invented modern disease advocacy: the branded charity, the identifiable child, the scientist testifying before appropriators. Every disease foundation since works from that template, and so does the criticism. Historians of the war on cancer say it promised more than it delivered, and that the cures Farber described to Congress as near were decades off. The Jimmy Fund raised money on the faces of sick children, though Farber insisted the first be known only as Jimmy. His clinic decided for families rather than with them, a paternalism that was standard then and is not now. Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies made him widely known. He died at his desk on March 30, 1973, and his foundation became Dana-Farber.

Sidney Farber's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Postmortem Examination other
  His manual on autopsy method, long a standard reference in pediatric pathology 1937
• The first remissions in childhood leukemia discovery
  Aminopterin given to 16 dying children, 10 of whom remitted temporarily 1947
• Temporary Remissions in Acute Leukemia in Children Produced by Folic Acid Antagonist (Aminopterin) article
  New England Journal of Medicine, June 3, 1948 — the founding paper of chemotherapy 1948
• The Jimmy Fund other
  Built with the Variety Club of New England and named for a 12-year-old patient 1948
• Farber disease discovery
  A lipid storage disorder he described, which carries his name 1952
• Actinomycin D against Wilms tumor discovery
  The antibiotic with postoperative radiation produced remissions in a childhood kidney cancer 1955

• September 30, 1903 aged 0 Born in Buffalo, the third of 14 children His parents were Simon and Matilda Farber. One brother, Marvin, became a philosopher at the University of Buffalo.
• 1923 aged ~20 Graduates from the University of Buffalo and goes to Germany for medicine American medical schools were refusing Jewish applicants. He was fluent in German and took his first year at Heidelberg and Freiburg.
• 1929 aged ~26 Becomes the first full-time pathologist at Children's Hospital in Boston He had graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1927 and trained at Peter Bent Brigham.
• November 1947 aged 44 Gives aminopterin to 16 children with acute leukemia The compound was synthesized by Yellapragada Subbarow at Lederle. Ten children went into temporary remission.
• May 22, 1948 aged 44 A patient called Jimmy goes on national radio and the Jimmy Fund is born The Truth or Consequences broadcast raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Farber insisted the boy be identified only by a nickname.
• June 3, 1948 aged 44 Publishes the aminopterin results in the New England Journal of Medicine Many physicians wrote asking for the drug. Many scientists refused to believe the finding.
• 1955 aged ~52 Shows that actinomycin D and radiation can put Wilms tumor into remission
• December 23, 1971 aged 68 Nixon signs the National Cancer Act The end point of two decades of testimony and lobbying with Mary Lasker.
• March 30, 1973 aged 69 Dies of cardiac arrest in his office at 69

• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. lobbied
• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. parallel disease campaign
• Henrietta Lacks 1920–1951
  Her cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951 and became the most used human cell line in science. same era of cancer research