Arthur Schatzkin, January 20, 2011
Posted on the National Cancer Institute Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics website:
Dr. Arthur Schatzkin, an outstanding scientist, mentor, and leader in the field of nutritional epidemiology, passed away on January 20, 2011 from cancer. An internationally renowned pioneer in the field of nutrition and cancer and a gifted public speaker, he was a man of great personal and professional integrity who cared deeply about the impact of his work on public health.
Dr. Schatzkin received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.D. from the State University of New York, and an M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. from Columbia University. He came to NCI in 1984, and in 1999 was appointed as the Chief of the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch (NEB) in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG).
Dr. Schatzkin was committed to understanding the role of nutrition in cancer etiology and prevention. Early in his career, he was the first to describe an association between moderate alcohol intake and breast cancer risk. He then turned his attention to the role of diet in the prevention of colorectal cancer. He led the landmark NCI Polyp Prevention Trial, which determined that eating fiber did not prevent the recurrence of polyps in the colon.
Dr. Schatzkin was instrumental in addressing the major methodological issues that have limited progress in nutritional epidemiology. As an example, to overcome the limited range of reported dietary intake in cohort studies, he conceived and launched the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which at the time was the largest prospective cohort investigation of diet and nutrition in relation to cancer causation. This long-term study of approximately 500,000 men and women already has generated more than 100 original scientific papers and continues to be an invaluable resource utilized by investigators worldwide.
Dr. Schatzkin was dedicated to the pursuit of strategies in nutritional epidemiology and to the training, mentoring, and support of young scientists. During his tenure as Branch Chief, NEB grew from two investigators to a highly productive team of more than 20 scientists.
Dr. Schatzkin was at the forefront of efforts to meet the challenges of research in nutritional epidemiology. By developing new methods to assess the components of nutritional status, he provided strong leadership that inspired creativity and passion in trainees and senior scientists alike. His great personal warmth, intellectual curiosity, and genuine commitment to improve public health through exemplary science will be greatly missed.
Published in The New York Times on February 11, 2011
Arthur Schatzkin, Who Studied High-Fiber Diet and Polyps, Dies at 62
Dr. Arthur Schatzkin, an epidemiologist whose investigations into the connections between diet and cancer yielded new analytic tools and led to the discovery that eating fiber did not prevent the recurrence of polyps in the colon, died on Jan. 20 in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 62.
The cause was brain cancer, said the National Cancer Institute, where Dr. Schatzkin was chief of the nutritional epidemiology branch in the division of cancer epidemiology.
Dr. Schatzkin attracted worldwide attention in 2000 when he reported on a large-scale experiment to see whether a high-fiber diet might curb the recurrence of polyps in the colon and rectum. Such polyps can become malignant.
Dividing 2,079 people into two groups, he put one group on a low-fat, high-fiber diet calling for lots of fruits and vegetables, and he had the other group’s members follow their usual diets. He concluded that the special diet had no effect on the recurrence of polyps.
The delicacy in establishing links between food and cancer made Dr. Schatzkin cautious in offering dietary recommendations. His polyp study, he noted, showed only that eating fiber had no effect in stopping the future growth of another polyp. It did not address whether eating fiber would prevent a polyp in the first place, or whether it would have any influence on a polyp developing into a cancerous tumor.
One of Dr. Schatzkin’s later initiatives, however, did find evidence that a particular kind of fiber, from unrefined whole grains, might reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. The discovery was made through a database of more than 500,000 individuals that Dr. Schatzkin had put together in the 1990s. It has yielded more than 100 studies that have found significant relationships between body mass and mortality and between eating meat and liver cancer, among other things.
To create the database, Dr. Schatzkin enlisted AARP, the organization for older Americans, to provide volunteers. More than 560,000 men and women over 50 agreed to fill out periodic questionnaires about diet, physical activity, family health history and other information. When the data are combined with records of mortality and disease incidence, researchers can tease out correlations between diet and disease.
“Nothing like this had ever been initiated,” Dr. Rashmi Sinha, a senior investigator at the cancer institute, said of the database in an interview on Tuesday.
Arthur Gould Schatzkin was born on Feb. 11, 1948, in New York City, and graduated from Yale and the State University of New York Downstate College of Medicine. He earned master’s and doctorate degrees in public health from Columbia.
He joined the National Cancer Institute in 1984 and became the chief of nutritional epidemiology in 1999. He increased the number of scientists working in his branch to 26, from four or five.
Dr. Schatzkin is survived by his wife, Dr. Tamara Harris Schatzkin, chief of geriatric epidemiology at the National Institute on Aging; their children, Eric and Rebecca Schatzkin; a sister, Dorothy Schatzkin Higgins; and a brother, Paul.
Class Notes: Arthur Schatzkin passed away on January 20 after a year-long battle with glioblastoma. After Yale, Art received an MD from the State University of New York, and an MPH and DrPH from Columbia University. From an online obituary: “Dr. Schatzkin was an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of nutrition and cancer. He came to NCI in 1984, and since 1999 served as the chief of the Nutritional Epidemiology Branch (NEB) in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG). Throughout his career, Dr. Schatzkin was an outstanding scientist, mentor, and leader in the field of nutritional epidemiology. He was a gifted public speaker and a man of personal and professional integrity who cared deeply about the impact of his work on public health.
“Dr. Schatzkin had great personal warmth and humor, tremendous intellectual curiosity and honesty, a genuine interest in all, and a passion for improving public health through exemplary science. He fundamentally understood the importance of his work in the minds of average citizens, and he steadfastly supported the responsible dissemination of his findings to the American public. Dr. Schatzkin is survived by his wife, Dr. Tamara Harris (chief, geriatric epidemiology section, National Institute on Aging), and their children, Rebecca and Eric.”
One of Art Schatzkin’s sophomore roommates was John Moore, who told your scribe that he had had no contact with Art since that year, but, “ironically, only three years ago I learned that he was at NIH. I am an NIH-funded medical researcher. I had planned to contact him about our strange parallel paths after starting out with such different ideas and backgrounds. Now it is too late. I have always told my students that today is the only day for action: yesterday is a memory and tomorrow is a figment of the imagination. Here I have failed to take my own advice.”
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