Michael Berger (physician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael Berger (born June 2, 1944 in Schmalkalden ; † August 18, 2002 in Düsseldorf ) was a German internist and diabetologist.

Life

Berger studied medicine at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich . He became a member of the Corps Rhenania Würzburg (1963) and the Corps Franconia Munich (1965). As an inactive person he was at the National University of Ireland, Galway and at the University of Düsseldorf, which emerged from the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf in 1965 ( Heinrich Heine University since 1988 ). In 1970 he completed his studies in Düsseldorf with a doctorate on studies of lipolysis in human adipose tissue in vitro . This was followed by stays at Harvard Medical School , the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and the Institute for Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Geneva . The Habilitation took place in 1976. Two years later he was appointed professor of Dusseldorf in internal medicine appointed. After he was senior physician and deputy head of the Department of Metabolic Diseases and Nutrition (Head: Professor Horst Zimmermann [1919-1995]), he headed the department as Zimmermann's successor since 1985, initially provisionally, and became about 1993 after the department was converted into a independent clinic its director. From 1984 to 1994 he worked as vice dean and in 1994 as dean of the medical faculty. He and some of his colleagues from the Medical Faculty, including Dean Professor Peter Pfitzer (1929-2016), voted in 1988 to name the university after Heinrich Heine. Together with Petr Skrabanek, to whom he was close, he criticized the scientific methods and directions of current medicine, and ostentatiously supported the criticism of Hanauske-Abel and others of the academic medicine of National Socialism; he sympathized with the IPPNW . Berger died after years of serious illness at the age of 58. He left behind his wife, colleague Ingrid Mühlhauser .

Create

The focus of his scientific work was the improvement of health care for chronically ill people. Berger et al. Developed the so-called structured therapy programs for diabetes mellitus , bronchial asthma and hypertension , based on patient training programs that already existed in the 1970s. a. by Jean-Philippe Assal (Geneva), Leona V. Miller (Los Angeles) and John K. Davidson (Atlanta). These approaches ultimately received broad recognition in Germany and around the world.

Another focus of Berger's work was international cooperation. a. with countries of the Eastern Bloc and Latin America . The clinic he heads was therefore named a Collaborating Center for Diabetes by the World Health Organization ; it was the only German-speaking center of its kind. In the last few years of his activity he increasingly turned to evidence-based medicine and advocated better patient autonomy, in particular for the integration of patient-informed decision-making processes and a partnership between patient and doctor. Since 1981 he had always maintained: "The normalization of the metabolism [and thus the HbA1c value] has become the categorical imperative of diabetes therapy because of the late-stage diabetic damage that otherwise occurs." Only towards the end of his life did he change his opinion to the effect that it According to the principles of evidence-based medicine, diabetes patients themselves should set their personal HbA1c target value, taking into account both the risks and the efforts they would be willing to take on.

He had profitable contacts in the insulin industry (Novo-Nordisk, Lilly, Hoechst-Aventis). At the end of the 1980s, he advocated increasing the insulin concentration from 40 units per milliliter (U-40) to 100 units per milliliter (U-100) in Germany, genetically engineered human insulin and then the market launch of artificially modified insulin preparations (so-called insulin analogues ). Among other things, the insulin analogue B10Asp (later also called insulin X10) was tested in his department on healthy students before animal experiments showing a carcinogenic effect were completed - the study was discontinued in 1992 by the Novo-Nordisk company. On behalf of the Lilly company, he examined the insulin analog Lispro in people with type 1 diabetes mellitus. For use in his department at the University of Düsseldorf, he raised third-party funding in the millions.

Berger was the author or co-author of around 600 specialist articles and several textbooks and guides. He served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). From 1983 to 1988 he was editor-in-chief of the journal Diabetologia .

Honors

Michael Berger has received numerous science prizes and awards, including the Claude Bernard Medal - the highest award from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes - and the Harold Rifkin Award from the American Diabetes Association . For his achievements in diabetes research, Michael Berger received honorary doctorates from five foreign universities , namely the Warsaw Medical University , the University of Skopje , the Autonomous University of Barcelona , the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice and the Medical University of Sofia . In 1993 he was appointed Temporary Consulting of the WHO Europe Region and appointed to the Defense Medical Advisory Board by the Federal Minister of Defense. Since 2006, the University of Düsseldorf has been awarding a prize every two years as part of the Michael Berger Memorial Lecture to honor particularly outstanding international achievements in the field of tension between evidence-based medicine and patient focus. The European Diabetes Society EASD has been dedicating its own symposium to Michael Berger since the 2008 annual conference. The "Michael Berger Debate" is a pro-contra discourse on a current topic in clinical diabetology and is intended to recall Michael Berger's critical view of medicine and science.

Monographs

  • Michael Berger: Studies on lipolysis on human adipose tissue in vitro . University of Düsseldorf, medical faculty, February 11, 1970, DNB  482044438 (231 pages, dissertation).
  • Viktor Jörgens, Monika Grüßer, Michael Berger: My book about diabetes mellitus for intensified insulin treatment . 17th, revised edition. Kirchheim, Mainz 2003, ISBN 978-3-87409-367-5 .
  • Viktor Jörgens, Monika Grüßer, Michael Berger: How do I treat my diabetes: for type II diabetics who do not inject insulin . 6th edition. Kirchheim, Mainz 1992, ISBN 978-3-87409-188-6 .
  • Monika Grüßer, Viktor Jörgens, Michael Berger: Before you eat insulin: for the flexible treatment of type 2 diabetes with normal insulin . 2nd Edition. Kirchheim, Mainz 2000, ISBN 978-3-87409-318-7 .
  • Michael Berger: Need-based insulin therapy with free food: Karl Stolte's contribution to clinical diabetology . Kirchheim, Mainz 1999, ISBN 978-3-87409-299-9 .
  • Sabine Rinke, Michael Berger: The first years of insulin therapy . Zuckschwerdt, Munich, Bern, Vienna 1983, ISBN 978-3-88603-050-7 (also University of Düsseldorf, dissertation S. Rinke).
  • Michael Berger (Ed.): Diabetes mellitus . 1st edition. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 1995.
  • Michael Berger (Ed.): Diabetes mellitus . 2, revised edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich / Jena 2000.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 134/693; 38/1289
  2. ↑ a b c d e Philippe A. Halban, Viktor Jörgens: Michael Berger, in memoriam . In: Diabetologia . tape 45 , October 2002, p. R45 – R46 , doi : 10.1007 / s00125-002-0986-3 (English, PDF at springer.com).
  3. ↑ Michael Berger: Horst Zimmermann passed away . In: Düsseldorfer Uni-Zeitung . Volume 24, No. 6 . Düsseldorf 1995, p. 33 .
  4. ↑ a b Sebastian Wolking: Professor Berger has passed away. Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf , accessed on August 2, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Hartmut M. Hanauske-Abel: From Nazi Holocaust to Nuclear Holocaust: A Lesson to Learn . In: The Lancet . August 2, 1986, p. 271-273 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g R. Mies: Obituary for Prof. Dr. med. Drs. Hc mult. Michael Berger (1944–2002), Düsseldorf . In: Werner Waldhäusl (Ed.): Endocrinium and Metabolism: 27th Symposium of the Society for Advances in Internal Medicine (=  series of publications by the Society for Advances in Internal Medicine . Volume 27 ). Georg Thieme, 2003, ISBN 978-3-13-133131-1 , p. 29 ( full text in Google Book Search).
  7. ^ Professor Michael Berger .: More self-help for diabetics. Reduction in hospital stays / intensive training for therapy. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 232 , October 7, 1981, pp. 33-34 .
  8. ↑ Michael Berger, Ingrid Mühlhauser: Evidence-based Therapy of Type 2 Diabetes . In: U.Di Mario, F. Leonetti, G. Pugliese, P. Sbraccia, A. Signore (eds.): Diabetes in the New Millenium . John Wiley & Sons, Chichester 2000, pp. 171–176 : "Following the principles of evidence-based medicine, it will now be up to patients to decide on their own HbA1c target level, depending on the risks they are prepared to take and the efforts they are prepared to make"
  9. ^ Michael Berger: Towards more physiological insulin therapy in the 1990s. A comment . In: Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice . tape 6 , 1989, pp. S25-S31 .
  10. ↑ Michael Berger, F. Arnold Gries (Ed.): Frontiers in Insulin Pharmacology . Georg Thieme Publishing Group, Stuttgart / New York 1993, ISBN 978-3-13-126601-9 .
  11. ↑ L. Heinemann, T. Heise, LC. Wahl, ME.Trautmann, J.Ampudia, AA.Starke, M.Berger: Prandial glycaemia after a carbohydrate-rich meal in type 1 diabetic patients: using the rapid acting insulin analogue [Lys (B28), Pro (29)] human insulin . In: Diabetic Medicine . tape 13 , no. 7 , 1996, pp. 625-629 .
  12. ^ Anonymus: Former editors-in-chief of the journal Diabetologia of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes EASD. European Association for the Study of Diabetes EASD, accessed August 7, 2019 .
  13. ↑ German Medical Weekly 1993; 118: 208
  14. ↑ Michael Berger memory lecture. Institute for General Practice, University Hospital Düsseldorf , accessed on August 3, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Michael Berger debate: Improving glucose control in type 1 diabetes: sensors vs pumps. In: easd.org. Retrieved October 18, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Berger, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German internist and university professor, diabetologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Schmalkalden
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 2002
Place of death Dusseldorf