Jordan Gutterman and Adam Gutterman

Recorded August 12, 2012 Archived August 12, 2012 42:51 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: sfb001943

Description

Jordan Gutterman (73) talks with his son Adam Gutterman (35) about his career in medicine, the illnesses in his family that motivated him to seek treatments and cures in a clinical setting and how he continues to be energized by the prospects for research.

Subject Log / Time Code

J grew up in South East South Dakota where his Russian immigrant grandfather settled 100 years ago.
J's parents met on a streetcar, then settled in Flandreu, SD, where the family had a grocery store and they raised J and his two brothers.
J's parents stressed the importance of learning, public school education as well as Jewish education. They attended a synagogue in Sioux Falls and high school in Flandreu.
J's interest in medicine began when his father suffered a massive heart attack which he recovered from. J was also affected by the death of his uncle from lung cancer. J's mother made a habit of visiting the sick and brought along J.
The family moved to Norfolk, VA, which had a larger Jewish community and better weather. J graduated from high school there and then went on to the University of Virginia where he developed and interest in clinical medicine, particularly blood diseases and cancer.
After an internship and fellowship at Duke University, J moved to Texas in the early 1970's.
J served at Brook Army Hospital in San Antonio, Texas in the early days of chemotherapy and found a mentor in Emil Freireich, who inspired a passionate concern for treating cancer and was affiliated with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
J and his wife had three children, one born in Norfolk and two in Texas.
In 1974, J's father developed congestive heart failure and passed away in April 1974. J recalls the last time he saw his father and kissed him goodbye. His father saw all of his family before passing away on the first day of Passover.
In May of 1974, J got a call about a Mary Lasker, a pivotal person in his career, a philanthropist who founded the Lasker Awards for medical research in 1945. Emil Freireich, J's mentor, was a winner of the award.
J was able to earn a Lasker Award for his work with interferon, a drug that was promising in treating cancer.
At the Anderson Cancer Center, J became intrigued with the use of plants, particularly desert plants, in developing new medicines. J now is working with stem cells and pharmacology.
In 2008 J wrote an essay about how important it is to work on the development of new treatments and approaches.

Participants

  • Jordan Gutterman
  • Adam Gutterman

Recording Locations

CJM

Venue / Recording Kit


Transcript

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00:00 Newman

00:05 My name is Adam Gutterman IM. 35 years old today is August 12th, 2012. We are at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. And my partner is my father.

00:17 And I am Jordan Gutterman and 73 years old and Adam. My son is going to be interviewing me.

00:26 So I'm dad. Tell me about your child to tell me about growing up where she grow up while most people think I'm from New York City, but actually I grew up in a small little town in southeast South Dakota old town called flandrau.

00:43 My dad was a Russian immigrant and my mother was a native of Iowa and he immigrated just a little more than a few months more than a hundred years ago and came through with his brother. He had two brothers through Galveston, Texas and they didn't come through Ellis Island. They did not because there was a program when he came through in 1911 to there were too many Jews that were in a settling into the New York area and they said it would be good to have the juice spread out throughout this fast land so guy named shift Jacob shift around the time. My dad came from until it was now Belarus a little more stable call kalenkiewicz.

01:24 Came to Galveston and his oldest brother had emigrated previously. They were cousins there and he end up in Sioux City Iowa. And so they were three sons of the my grandparents my grandparents his parents and three sisters never made it to America and never met them.

01:48 So I when your dad ended up in flandrau, what did he what did he do when I'm sure he's titled will eventually he was only fourteen or so when he came here shortly after his bar mitzvah, I guess old enough yet. I think lie to get into the country have to keep put down on his immigration papers 18 how many went to work and eventually own the grocery store and had his two brothers working for him. He was the youngest and eventually was offered a job in a little town and that's what Jewish people did Jewish immigrants in those days. They went where the opportunities were. He went to a little town called flandreu was a town of about 2500 people a farming Community about 16 miles west of the Minnesota border and began to run a department store department store for this prosperous farming community that my mother it was a native is as a set of Boone Iowa of a German Jewish family, and they had emigrated many many years before

02:48 I was born in Boone and when they moved to Sioux City, Iowa, and he met my mother in A Streetcar one day and then it was amazing. I mean courageous that he would move as a single man because they and got married. They got married in October of 1927.

03:05 And had three sons my oldest brother Julian who is now 81 and I have a fraternal twin Lawrence who's also a physician who now lives in in Connecticut with his wife who's older you or Lawrence. I am by about 20 to 30 minutes and I never one that we were small. It was always great to be over now. I got a ribbon because I'm always a year older because we were born on different days. I was born right before midnight and he was born right after midnight. So tell me about growing up in flandrau growing up. I mean, it was very peaceful community. It was very interesting. There's an Indian School their kids from the reservations would be sent to to this in your school to go to high school and so forth. It was a very it was not a particularly Diversified Community other than the Native Americans, but we went to grade school there and started a high school until until we were fourteen. I say we My Brother and Me Lawrence

04:05 And the things that were important to my parents my mother and father was of course education getting a great education and particular for my father is an immigrant the Jewish immigrant coming from a highly religious family is father was a rabbi in Orthodox Rabbi. Of course, I'll getting a Jewish Education. They were to synagogues at the time in Sioux Falls South Dakota, which is about 40 miles south of Flandreau. There was a reform synagogue and also an orthodox synagogue where many of the people who are immigrants, of course, we're much more comfortable. So we traipse they're married. My dad would drive with my brother and me to Sunday school every every Sunday in the end. We got permits for their home. We were thirteen Jewish Education was extremely important my dad compromise because my mother grew up in a reform synagogue, which was pretty common for the German immigrants cruise ship during German immigrants. And so we went to work for reform Temple as we

05:05 Found it.

05:06 So after after you burned it said you went to HighSchool. How long did you stay in flandrau before they ever if I recall correctly you moved we moved. That's correct. My oldest brother Julian met a young woman and got got married in 1952 to a young woman from Norfolk, Virginia. My dad had had which is one of the first things got me interested in medicine in 1948 is a fairly young man is early that he was actually 51 a massive heart attack and he was actually in my mother took the first vacation in many years and he had it in California and we had gone to spend the summer with my grandfather and my aunts and Iowa and

05:50 That was the first thing was in the got me interested in medicine when I finally learned about his heart attack began to watch him. He'll about that. Same time. He is one of his older brother's Frank who lived with us Frank never got married about four months after my dad's heart attack. My my uncle began to cough. He was a two-pack-a-day lucky smoker and he worked in in the department store with my dad and my mother and he developed this for the late fall of 1948 and by May of 1949, he had died of lung cancer and then a few other experiences particular with my mother of sick people that she always tended to begin to instill a deep interest in in medicine. And so we moved when we were halfway through 9th grade freshman in high school to Norfolk, Virginia think the two reasons were the severe Winters In Those Days Inn in in South Dakota and

06:50 And and also my parents wanted my brother need to be exposed and have more Jewish friends So eventually we would marry a Jewish woman.

07:02 So you move to Norfolk when you are on 14 or 15 14. When did you go to university? Where where did you go finish High School in 1956 and I went to the University of Virginia Inn in Charlottesville. We became a free pre-med and also majored in religion and philosophy. So we've started took two major pre-med major as well as a liberal arts education, which we felt both felt it was going to be very important.

07:35 So back in the late 50s early 60s, there wasn't on call if you wasn't feeling so, how did you how did you get into studying cancer?

07:44 Good question graduated college in in 1960 and went to medical school in Richmond, Virginia. And the first semester for me was very difficult. I did. Well, I had good grades but I still was kind of my head was still in philosophy and religion. I really wasn't that committed until toward the end of my freshman year and then as we began to do clinical work, I got became very interested in the internal medicine in general and diagnosing patients with different diseases and began to focus and think about blood diseases and hematology and cancer as well. Probably installed first by the the death of my uncle but also one thing that characterize both my parents put the tickle my mother in terms of day-to-day involvement was that she she took my brother and me to visit many of the sick people and old people both in the little town of flandreu in Norfolk, Virginia where we

08:44 Jordan High School, I once wrote a piece because I took some creative writing courses called rounds with Mom and a doctor's going around to see patients and so forth in this was really an education. We would see them frequently every week and we didn't do any medical thing but you could see the suffering and the involved in the real human eyeball man in my mother and father were deeply committed to these people my mother would bake cookies or soup or get them to eat or take them out and so forth and so on and so that's really all those experiences really got me interested in medicine and then I became deeply interested in cancer and more more probably initially and hematology because as you point out there was no actual special leave oncology then and this particular blossoms when I enter into Duke down in Durham, North Carolina, where did a medical internship and residency and then decided both my brother and me. Actually decided to specialize in

09:44 Hematology, so we spent two years in the fellowship. I spend another year being chief resident and then made my way eventually to to Texas. The reason I got to text swear. I'm still located 40 years later is after finishing 5 years of training at Duke which was really intensive in The Marvelous. The Vietnam War was going on and we had to do a commitment for military and there was a thing called a very plan and you sign up for it and you're generally if you have full training assigned to a reasonable teaching Hospital in the military and I was wanting to go to the state of Washington that it was just that thought. It'd be a great opportunity for two years was a two-year commitment to see that part of the world.

10:30 And it was very very fortunate than I was a sign actually is it turns out to Brooke Army hospital located in San Antonio, Texas. I couldn't even imagine going to Texas. So we arrived I arrived in San Antonio I want is a captain at the brook Army hospital on the day. We landed in the moon interesting way in July 1969 and started a two-year stint in the Army, but I was head of hematology was a marvelous experience, but the best thing that experience was it was twofold first. I work within the bona fide oncologist oncology was started the year. I got in the military and this fellow from senator from from originally from Colombia Bogota Colombia. It rained in MD Anderson, and he actually trained me and many of the new chemotherapeutic ideas and I'm called you while I was there. So in a sense I extended my training with this this this person Victoria Rodriguez in addition. He had many of his mentor is from M.D. Anderson.

11:30 Come to San Antonio where we located to give Grand rounds and teach and lecture and so forth and I was very inspired by one particular individual.

11:41 His name was and still is he's a still a vigorous man of 85 years old. His name is Abel Frye Ray J Ferrar make it was than the head of a department associate head of a department called developmental Therapeutics. Dr. Friedrich. We all call him Jay was the principal man responsible for the Cure of childhood leukemia. This man is brilliant bold and courageous and he broke all the rules and terms of doing clinical things that people never heard of before for example, treating intensively with chemotherapy and then supporting these children with platelet transfusions and vigorous antibiotics to get them through the travails of the disease and the and the and the chemotherapy so you met this doctor in San Antonio in spiration. He has been for 40 years to do. He's outspoken. He's brilliant.

12:41 And his correct Curry gin and passion.

12:46 For cancer the treatment of cancer do do better. We can always do better never accepting the status quo. This was such an inspiration for me and I knew then what my career was going to be. I was going to go to Houston, Texas to Houston Texas. Some just a 45-minute drive from Galveston where your father's are. We in the wee means my wife Sue and one of my four children, which we can come back to Danielle and her family two children and husband went down on the hundredth anniversary last December December 10th in 2011 to celebrate and honor my father's immigration to this country. So it was from from Cut like a bitch Russia to Houston, Texas to Iowa South Dakota down to Virginia eventually through Duke.

13:40 To Texas to the Army and these various contacts and taking opportunities. So that's exactly how I got to Houston Texas is after my two years accepting an offer and then, as a young assistant professor at the ND Anderson Cancer Center, which was and still is part of the University of Texas and academic appointment in Houston to do cancer research more focused initially and hematology, but for all cancers as well, so that's that's how I got to Houston. That's why I was born there and it's you mentioned Danielle. She was born in 72 and he was and what about Idina and David the oldest two children and your mother, of course in their mother is is we're not divorced Eleanor. She still lives in and he's in the Houston and we're actually quite close and she's quite close with Sue my wife. The oldest is David who lives in Chicago II is Dina who's in Portland, Oregon? Where were they before they were both born?

14:40 In Durham North Carolina is hurt their dookies and they were both born there. And then we when we move to Houston the third child Danielle was born on Watergate day. I always have these connections with special dates like landing on the day of the Moon the birth on Watergate day, June 17th, 1972, and then you were born in October for 5 days after my birthday in 1976 in Houston. So what happened in 1974 between Danny Allen and myself being born with your father?

15:15 Well, what happened was two things happened in 1974 that affected me deeply the first was and the TV the year that Danielle was born it became obvious to me both of them to take as a position but also has a son that my father was beginning to develop congestive heart failure. Remember I'd said in the forties 4080 and had a heart attack.

15:42 And and and almost died. He must have been a massive heart failure at that time as a miracle that until 19 the early 1970s. He remained quite healthy. He had a mild stroke in 1970 while I was in the military in San Antonio been in 72 began to going very slow heart failure has very little to do for heart failure other than the old plant product the digitalis and it was always a tradition for us to go to visit my parents on Passover. And the reason for that I think is that that particular holiday Escape From Slavery. So to speak Freedom was in the extraordinary holiday for my father because in fact by living in Russia prior to World War one way before the Holocaust, it was still time of the czar's and persecution.

16:40 And Jews immigrated like crazy for you know who in the late 18th and early 1900 primarily to this country and a few other countries to get away from totalitarianism and so forth. So then immigration From Slavery to Freedom amazing amounts to him. So for him, it was also a time for for family to get together every year we would go back to Norfolk Virginia where they lived for Passover as it got sicker and sicker it became even more important so that particular year 1974 it was in April we went to to Norfolk but by that time my father had just been hospitalized now for about the six or seven the time for heart failure and it became obvious when I saw him that he was not going to last long because he could barely talk. He was so filled up with fluid that just could not be removed from his lung and he spoke with a whisper.

17:36 So the first night of passover, which he always LED this was the first night my oldest brother Julian led the Seder it was on April 6th 1974. And I remember my father about 9:30 in the evening calling our home my mom my mother's home and saying hi was the matzo ball soup.

17:58 My mother said we'll bring you some tomorrow course he was missing us but he was still quite alert and everything the next day April 7th 1970 for all of us all the grandchildren with the three siblings and so forth went to the hospital and a nurse will my father down and he saw all of us there and he was cheerful and so forth and I remember it to this very day leaning over to kiss him. Goodbye at a very small mustache and I could still feel the rubber that mustache on that kiss and I was the last to kiss him and then the nurse wheeling up to his room we drove home. It was only 5 or 6 minute drive to my mother's place and as my brother and I were trying to get the key in the door, we heard the phone ring and we looked at each other and we knew immediately what had happened. My father was taken back to his room back to his bed the nurse laid him down and he passed away. He died very peacefully.

18:59 I think he live that long to see us all there to support my mother. That's just the way he was the time he knew he couldn't live any longer and he finally died on the very first day of Passover. So Passover continues to be passed on to me because it's a remembrance of him dying in the Jewish calendar the 15th of Nisan in this case April 7th. 1974 for 77470 pound drum. Yes. I can always of course. I have not that I would need this an anniversary Remembrance in the Jewish calendar of his yard side of his death. And I mean, it's always the first day and first night in the first day of Passover so that freedom to slavery that passion that commitment has always remained and of course continuous with the same commitment to try to help the suffering of the slavery of cancer free people of cancer of that type of suffering because

19:59 That's what he sacrificed my grandparents sacrifice to bring them over here my brother's over here and they had to remain behind because it would have been very difficult for women single women to make it in those days. So the boys always had to go right two and a half years later. I was born and you gave me his his name didn't you your middle name is Simon or she meant in the in Hebrew. First name is Adam. This is right. Now that the same year that my father died.

20:31 About

20:34 Early May

20:36 There was a phone call from the president of our Institute the founder of our Institute. This was 1974 in MD Anderson was found in the early forties. Dr. Arlene Clark. Very famous woman was coming to visit MD Anderson or name was Mary Lasker.

20:56 Mary Lasker was another another pivotal person in my professional career. She and her husband started a foundation in the early forties call the Lasker Foundation Albert Lasker her husband or second husband hadn't made his fortune in in in advertising. It was probably the first grade Advertiser in the country and she was a great philanthropist in terms of stimulating government funds for medical research particular heart and cancer been any any anything and I think 45 and 46. She started the last rewards. So dr. Frey write my mentor in 1972 had one Alaska reward. I still remember this very clearly a clinical Lasker awards. That was very very excited. I was one of eight people there were one of eight that was invited to speak to her and I told her about my research that was not going to focus and chemotherapy that

21:56 Bedtime on the immune system and the somatic avoid you going to go through the differences of those approaches as far as how the how does medical approaches affect the treatment of cancer chemotherapy vs. Immunotherapy chemotherapy had been around since 1948 and that led eventually was Friedrich and his colleague. Dr. Frye picture of childhood leukemia and other cancers is well-liked Hodgkin's Disease and statistic of a cancer today and in a few other cancers choriocarcinoma, but the death rate continue to be still very high, even though chemotherapy was curing Lyme disease. Is there a lot of diseases cancers pancreatic cancer among them for which chemotherapy really had no effect. So I wanted to take a different approach. I'm not doing that particularly now, but it it was kind of like the atmosphere that I lived in his is do something different do something new. I mean freireich. Add Pioneer chemotherapy.

22:56 Beyond the river that most people were doing that and I got intrigued by the immune system and and so that it was on proving that the time but why did she die? How did you tell Mary Lasker about your thought? I told her I thought the chemotherapy was great as far as what is accomplished, but there was something much to be done and it was interesting but she was the principal person with with the President Nixon in 1971. The year, I got to MD Anderson in the National Cancer plan that puts so much more government money into cancer research, but I told her I was going to work on the immune system and so forth and she must have liked what she saw because she she heard because she came up to me afterwards and invited me to visit her in her apartment in New York and I was thrilled as it happened. I was giving a couple of lectures over the next several months up. There was right after my dad's death and

23:51 That's why I meant I went up there to meet with her.

23:55 And I've gotten interested in 1973 the year before this the first experiments of recombinant DNA or gene cloning had occurred and I was interested about the possibility of using new technology to produce proteins are substances from the body that could cure disease and so merry last for a night when we first met the privately up in New York in 1974. She had developed an interest in a substance called interferon and I to have begun to take notice of this interferon is a natural antiviral substance in the body of protein.

24:34 And it could not be produced and so in 1975, there was an international meeting in New York City on this topic and she committed saying we've got to do something. We've got to get new approaches to cancer interferon work by several ways. But primarily two ways one is directly affecting the growth that stopping the growth of certain cancer cells. The other is to activate the immune system.

25:01 And the from 1975 to 1977 weekly we made many attempts to get government funding to put money and it was very expensive to make this because it was still not produced by any any synthetic technique find me 1977 Mary committed a million dollars her Secretary of many years. I come down with recurrent breast cancer and it was a whiz you weren't even a year old. I remember that summer was August of 1977. You were too young to travel. We were in Houston on a Hot August Houston day. She called me and she said she was very direct eye doctor Gutterman. She said if I give you a million dollars, will you go to Sweden and Finland to see if you can buy interferon and start clinical trials, we've got to get going. That's what she was all about that. She was a late person.

25:52 So this began an amazing soccer for me, I went to visit her in October of 1977 which was pivotal for another reason because For the First Time, I began to notice the beautiful art on her walls the color and she noticed that she said when you get back from Europe, I'm going to take you to visit some artists. I think you have a good eye for this but that's not the main part of the story. Although it's a very tiny part of the story. So I went to Sweden and met with the person from Finland. Carrie can't tell who was making interferon a partial appearing purifying it from the blood cells of abnormal donors.

26:30 And in February of 1978, we treated our first patients breast cancer patients initially and then eventually the patients with him.