1950s

Michael J. Franzblau (M.D. 1952), clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, has been given the Truth and Justice Award by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Award by the Zionist Organization of America. Franzblau was given the awards for his efforts over many years to bring to international attention the role of Bavarian physician Hans Joachim Sewering in the 1940s in Germany in the killing of many physically and mentally handicapped children and adults as part of the Nazi government's "racial hygiene" program. Franzblau's efforts are featured in The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt by Timothy W. Ryback (Pantheon Books, 1999) and were described in a segment on CBS-TV's Sixty Minutes in October, 1996. Franzblau can be reached at mfranzblau@aol.com.

Mark Menzel (M.D. 1959), an allergist in Boulder, Colorado, retired last fall from his practice with the Boulder Valley Asthma and Allergy Clinic, which he founded in 1966. A residency and fellowship at National Jewish Hospital brought him to Colorado in 1964. The photo here appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera last August when Menzel was featured in an interview about his career and his hobby, which involves researching the health of American presidents.

1960s

Herbert L. Cares (M.D. 1963), a Boston neurosurgeon, invites his classmates and others to visit his Web site at http://www.hlcares.com/. There he discusses and provides photos of his professional life and his work as well as his personal life, including his marriage last year to nurse Karen DiPietro, who shares his love of serious ballroom dancing.

The work of Irene Zsuzsi Danek (M.D. 1968) was featured in the December, 1999, issue of Michigan Medicine, the publication of the Michigan State Medical Society. Danek, who is on the staff of the private Interlochen Arts Academy south of Traverse City, specializes in a new field known as "arts medicine," dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of injuries common to dancers, musicians, singers and others in the performing arts. She is also conducting research on lung function in musicians. Danek herself is a pianist. She is married to Medical School classmate Charles Danek, who earned his M.D. from U-M in 1968 and completed his residency in physical medicine at Michigan in 1976.

Glenn Geelhoed (M.D. 1968) is the author of Out of Assa, Heart of the Congo, Medical Adventures in Central Africa (Three Hawks Publishing, April 2000). Geelhoed is professor of surgery and professor of international medical education at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The book is an account of his volunteer medical work in Assa, a remote village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the summer of 1998. Henry Berry, editor and publisher of The Small Press Book Review, wrote about Out of Assa, "Geelhoed's detailed, observant journal has an immediacy that will satisfy the arm-chair traveler or inform a reader looking for a picture of life in central Africa today… Geelhoed observes it all with a sharp anthropological eye, subtle humor, and humanitarian affinity." The book may be ordered from the publisher (1300 Bishop Lane, Alexandria, VA 22302) or by e-mail at kej@3hawks.com. More information may be obtained by visiting the publisher's Web site at http://www.3hawks.com.

1970s

Gary S. Kaplan (M.D. 1978) has been elected chairman and CEO of the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. Kaplan, a practicing physician in internal medicine, was elected to the four-year term by the Center's member physicians. Kaplan has served in a number of senior leadership positions at Virginia Mason, where he began practicing medicine in 1978. As chairman, Kaplan assumes the helm of a health care system with annual revenues of $500 million providing health care to more than 150,000 residents of the Pacific Northwest.

1980s

Alice D. Ma (M.D. 1989) has been awarded a Junior Faculty Scholar Award by the American Society of Hematology. The award was presented to her at the 41st annual meeting of the Society last December in New Orleans. Ma, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, will use her award to study pleckstrin, a protein found in platelets and white blood cells. Ma's study will focus on the DEP domain, a group of amino acids within pleckstrin, and its role in intermolecular interactions.

Ma earlier in her career received several honors including a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholarship at the National Institutes of Health, a Mentored Clinical Scientist Development Award from NIH and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and a University of Pennsylvania Pearls Teaching Award. Ma was a fellow and instructor in hematology at the Penn School of Medicine before joining the faculty at North Carolina in 1998.

Deaths

Richard E. Fry (M.D. 1978), on May 5, 2000, in Indianapolis. He served as assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School prior to moving in 1989 to Indianapolis, where he directed vascular surgery at St. Francis Hospital until his death. He was chief of surgery at St. Francis from 1997 to 1998, a member of its medical staff executive and policy committees, and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He was 47.

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The Dangers of Market-Driven Beauty: Anesthesiologist Linda McBryde Helps Women Look Beyond the Mirror in Her New Book

Linda M. McBryde (M.D. 1987, Residency 1991) is the author of The Mass Market Woman: Defining Yourself as a Person in a World that Defines You by Your Appearance, published in 1999 by the Crowded Hour Press, her husband's publishing house. A part-time anesthesiologist at Providence Hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, McBryde is the mother of four children, whom she home-schools. McBryde based the book on her own experiences with bulimia as an adolescent and during her first years as a medical student. With nearly 5,000 copies sold, the author, who's promoted her book nationally via radio interviews by phone and via chat rooms on the Internet, says she's hearing from a disturbing number of young girls and from young women in their 20s and 30s facing what she summarizes as the "self actualization versus liposuction" quandary. The difficulty that many women have in being comfortable with who they are is something that McBryde says she's often presented with even in the operating room, where a woman will jokingly say, "By the way, when I'm asleep for my gall bladder, could you lift my breasts while you're at it?"

"I think we're really at the point where it's become a challenge for physicians responding to market-driven desires," she says, especially regarding the younger and younger girls seeking new faces and bodies through plastic surgery. "When do we draw the line and say 'This is not ethical?'" McBryde can be reached at linda@ massmarketwoman.com.

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