Interview with Theodore Van Itallie, MD by Norma M.T. Braun, MD

Dr. Norma Braun (neé Wang Mai Tsen) was born in Shanghai, China during the third Japanese invasion, before the World War II. Prior to the war her family was well off and very well educated. Both her grandfather and father spent time in American universities. Norma, however did not attend school until age 10, because of the war. In 1949, she, her mother and siblings relocated to Philadelphia. Norma, who desired to be a doctor from a young age, started medical school at Temple University but transferred to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (Class of 1963) after being offered a scholarship. She completed her internship and residency at Bellevue Hospital and began working at St. Luke’s Hospital in 1982, as a cardio-pulmonary fellow under A. Loomis Bell, MD, who ran the cardiopulmonary laboratory. Eventually she narrowed her specialty to pulmonary medicine, and continues to work in that area at St. Luke’s, now Mount Sinai Morningside.

Dr. VanItallie attended Harvard University and Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, completing his Internship and Residency at St. Luke's Hospital. He spent several years at Harvard's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before returning to St. Luke's as Chief of Medicine (1957 to 1975). His main goal as Chief was to build not only a fine medical center by attracting the best and brightest in medicine, but an outstanding research medical center by affiliating with Columbia University and becoming a university hospital. His own research pursuits revolved around metabolic nutritional issues in obesity. In 1975 St. Luke's Hospital created the first National Institute of Health-funded obesity research center under Dr. VanItallie. Collaborating with Sami Hashim, MD, they were the first to discover and publish their research on the use of cholestyramine in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and primary biliary cirrhosis in 1960. This was the first such drug developed to lower cholesterol. As of the time of this interview, Dr. VanItallie, age 98, is retired, but still working on a supplement he and Dr. Hashim developed which, in genetically modified Alzheimer's mice, has been shown to slow down and even halt or prevent Alzheimer's disease. It has FDA approval for clinical trials in humans if he can produce a better tasting product.