Abstract
Jerry loved the Cleveland Indians baseball team and, even though they would always break his heart, he remained loyal. During baseball season if you wandered by his office, you could often hear the games streaming over the Internet
Joshua W. Knowles, MD, PhD, FAHA, FACC
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
Stanford University
Jerry, you showed me how to be passionately dispassionate about what is revealed from real data, about how ideas can evolve and sometimes turn on a dime, and how intellectual honesty and integrity are the foundation. You live on in us.
PS And I forgive you for the brain damage you gave me in doing the first AACE Consensus Conference on the Insulin Resistance Syndrome so many years ago!
Dan Einhorn, MD, FACP, FACE
Chief, Diabetes and Endocrine Associates
Medical Director, Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute
Clinical Professor, UCSD School of Medicine
La Jolla, California
As an endocrine fellow and junior faculty member, Dr Reaven was always the Father of Insulin Resistance. Through kind words, encouragement and advice, he was important in my career development as he was for many other physician scientists. I remember him warmly and wish there were more like him.
W. Timothy Garvey, MD
Butterworth Professor and Chair
Department of Nutrition Sciences
GRECC Investigator and staff physician
Birmingham VA Medical Center
Was 2 years into my endocrine practice in 1988 when Dr Gerald Reaven described Syndrome X, coincident with the descriptions of the Atherogenic Pattern B Dyslipidemia Phenotype, and the introduction of the ATP I Cholesterol Guidelines. As a clinician, this coalescence gave me explanations to communicate with patients, with and without diabetes, and directions, with the tools available at the time, and the drive to learn more, to reduce their risk for atherosclerosis burden. Four years later I was honoured that he accepted my invitation to be our Keynote Speaker for our Annual Orange County, CA, Chapter, ADA, Diabetes Management Symposium. So immense his contribution, so famous had he become, yet so humbly he accepted a distinguished research clinician plaque as we honoured him.
Paul D. Rosenblit MD, PhD, FACE, FNLA
Clinical Professor, Medicine (Div. Endocrinology, Diabetes, Metabolism),
University California, Irvine (UCI), School of Medicine, Irvine, CA
Many years ago, I was a young electrophysiologist interested in ventricular arrhythmias and Dr Reaven showed me cellular pathways with free fatty acids and electrical disturbances. It was amazing how it controlled life-threatening arrhythmia with use of insulin in an extremely high-triglyceride patient having a myocardial infarction. I will never forget that.
Robert J. Chilton, DO, FACC
Professor of Medicine
The University of Texas
San Antonio, Texas
I first met Jerry Reaven when I was a graduate student in the laboratories of Dr Bernard Jeanrenaud and Dr Albert E Renold in Geneva in the late 1970s. He paid many visits there at our Institut de Biochimie Clinique and also did a sabbatical. He was always eager to meet students and I had many lively and inspiring scientific discussions with him and his wife Eve. I was struck by his enthusiasm and drive and could see the joy of doing science in his eyes, and all this was very inspiring for someone starting his career in medical research. It was so moving for me to give a lecture in his memory after all these years at the last WCIRDC meeting.
Very few scientists can claim that they have identified a disease that is, furthermore, of high prevalence in our modern societies. But this applies to Jerry Reaven. Metabolic syndrome is now listed as a disease entity (E88.81) in the International Classification of Diseases-10, avowing to the outstanding contribution of Jerry Reaven in bringing this clustering of factors involved in cardiometabolic diseases to the attention of clinicians and scientists.
Marc Prentki, PhD
Professor of Nutrition, Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, Université de Montréal,
Montreal, Canada
In addition to being a renowned scientist, Jerry was an ardent baseball fan, particularly of the Cleveland Indians. He and I often celebrated our July birthdays by watching the Indians play. It was always fun to watch him score baseball the ‘old fashion way’ by scorekeeping on a printed baseball scorecard and hear him relay stories of watching Bob Feller play. He also always refused to apply sunscreen.
Sun H. Kim, MD, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine,
California
At 8:00 am on 31 Aug 2016, I approached the lecture to a Grand Rounds lecture at Stanford School of Medicine. Heads went up as my first slide, entitled Insulin Resistance, Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, flickered on. With Gerry Reaven sitting in the front row I began by saying, ‘Despite conventional wisdom, anyone who thinks they understand insulin resistance is simply wrong’. Following the lecture, I had the opportunity to visit with Gerry and was struck by a very cluttered office, with a dusty desk on which was scattered a half-dozen or so, highly oxidised medallions, including the 1988 Banting Medal. Looking back, I carry with me the clear impression of a man animated by love of science and not accolades. A role model for us all.
With warmth and affection,
Ronald M. Evans, PhD
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
La Jolla, California
Dr Reaven: the giant in research with the gentle touch.
Always willing to hear you and let you know whether in his opinion you were right or wrong, and when wrong, letting you know in such a way that it never hurt you. What a quality of a man!
Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE
Clinical Professor of Medicine
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Dallas, Texas
In 1978, along with Don Chisholm from Sydney, we published a paper in Diabetologia – ‘The relationship of insulin response to a glucose stimulus over a wide range of glucose tolerance’. This demonstrated an inverted U-shaped pattern that is now known as ‘The Starlings Curve of the Pancreas’. We believed we were the first to describe this.
Within days, I received a polite but pointed note from a gentleman called Gerry Reaven from Stanford. He pointed out that he had reported this phenomenon 10 years earlier! Swallowing my pride, I made contact, and several months later while visiting the United States, visited and met Gerry in Palo Alto over dinner, for the first time. There we settled our ‘differences’ on the matter of publication priority. As to the key driving force/s of the Metabolic Syndrome, which he called Syndrome X, we differed on this issue, but it was the start of a friendship that spanned almost three decades.
Paul Zimmet AO, PhD, FRACP, FRCP, FTSE
Professor of Diabetes Research, Monash University,
Melbourne, Australia
Dr Gerald Reaven was the penultimate clinical investigator with unquestioned integrity, intellectual curiosity and creativity. He served as a role model for multiple generations of young investigators and I am proud to claim that he served as my role model.
Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD
Professor of Medicine
Chief, Diabetes Division
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA),
San Antonio, Texas
Jerry told me that before the Banting lecture, another researcher had turned to him and said, ‘Jerry, no one remembers if you are good but you will be remembered forever if you are bad’. To which Jerry replied ‘Here is to my infamy’.
Sue Kim, MD, MS Associate Professor of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine California
Gerald Reaven was a giant in his field, who positively influenced the careers of countless individuals, including myself. Possessed of an intellectual, inquiring mind and amazing drive and energy, he made a contribution that can truly be said to have changed medicine. In fact the journal hosting this special edition celebrating Dr Reaven’s life came into existence because of his work. I only really got to know Gerald in the last 15–20 years of his life and I discovered that the self same man who scared the life out of me with his penetrating questions in Denmark in the late 1980s was also extremely generous and kind as well as a great scientist – what a life!
Peter J Grant, FMed Sci
Professor of Medicine
University of Leeds,
Leeds UK
After travelling on some of the same circuits a number of years ago, Jerry and I realised, more or less simultaneously, that the atherogenic dyslipidemia that I had been working on for some time looked very much like the lipid component of his ‘Syndrome X’. So, sparked in large part by his characteristic energy and enthusiasm, we embarked on a collaboration that clearly linked these traits, and demonstrated Jerry’s unerring ability to strike at the heart of a question, and to nail the answer with elegance and simplicity.
Ronald M. Krauss, MD
Senior Scientist and Director, Atherosclerosis Research,
Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, California
Clinical Chemistry Point/CounterpointPoint “Metabolic syndrome: Requiescat in pace” by Jerry Counterpoint “Metabolic syndrome: Still Lives” by GrundyResponse “Metabolic syndrome” Just being alive is not enough, for as Sportin’ Life points out in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, “Methuselah lived 900 years, but who calls it living, when no gal will give in to him.” by Jerry
Sun H Kim, Associate Professor of Medicine
Stanf.ord University School of Medicine, California
Gerald Reaven (right) and Yehuda Handelsman at the World Congress of Insulin Resistance, Los Angeles, California
Gerald Reaven (left) receives an award from Yehuda Handelsman at the World Congress of Insulin Resistance, Los Angeles, California
