Vincent Dole

Vincent Paul Dole (born May 18, 1913 in Chicago , † August 1, 2006 in New York City ) was an American medic . Together with Marie Nyswander, he is considered the founder of substitution therapy for opiate addicts (Methadone Maintenance Treatment, MMT).

Dole, whose father was an olive oil importer in Chicago, attended Loyola Academy in Chicago and the Culver Military Academy in Indiana. He studied mathematics at Stanford University (Bachelor 1934), but then switched to medicine, which he studied at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University (MD 1939), with specialization in rheumatoid arthritis and psychiatry, despite good degrees . After completing his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital (which he continued in the arthritis clinic after the Second World War), he was from 1941 at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City , where he conducted research in clinical chemistry under Donald Van Slyke, for example Lipid metabolism and kidney failure. In 1947 he became an associate member and in 1951 a full member of the institute and, when it was converted to Rockefeller University in 1955, professor. He officially retired in 1993, but remained scientifically active at Rockefeller University for ten years .

During the Second World War he was drafted into the US Navy, but continued to work at the Rockefeller Institute, where he developed a copper sulfate test to measure the blood density and thus the required amount of blood plasma in shock patients, which was important for the field doctors. The test is still used today. In 1947 he examined the effect of the low-salt and low-protein diet of kidney patients on high blood pressure patients and found that the sodium ion in particular increased blood pressure. He then examined the metabolism of overweight patients, isolated their fatty acids in the blood plasma, found that these were the main sources of energy despite their low concentration and traced them to their origin in triglycerides in fat cells.

With his wife, the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Marie Nyswander (1919–1986), he began in New York City in 1964 to treat heroin addicts with methadone , which at the time was on uncertain legal ground. Drugs such as heroin were banned in the United States, and medical supervision was also tracked. Dole turned to Nyswander because he had read her book The Drug Addict as a Patient and wanted to work with her (Nyswander ran a street clinic for drug addicts). Shortly afterwards they married. Methadone had been developed as a pain reliever in Germany during World War II and had already been used in the 1940s, for example in the national drug clinic in Lexington (Kentucky) . As Dole and Nieswander discovered after testing various active ingredients, it effectively blocked the opiate receptors and thus the effects of heroin. Methadone was also addictive, but it had many advantages (more balanced mood, as it had a longer effect, oral administration instead of injection with less risk of infection, lower risk of overdoses, effect over 24 hours). The therapy enabled many heroin addicts to lead a reasonably normal life and reduced the risk of infection with HIV and other diseases, but repeatedly encountered resistance in New York (among other things because it made itself dependent), where Dole subsequently passed many years struggled to maintain the methadone clinics. The success of the therapy was proven in a 15-year study (1964 to 1979) with 96,000 drug addicts in New York.

In 1983 he also turned to the study of alcoholism, but found that mice were unsuitable as models of human alcoholism because they did not become dependent due to their faster metabolic rate.

In 1969 Dole was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 1972 to the National Academy of Sciences . In 1970 Doel received a Gairdner Foundation International Award , in 1988 the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research . The American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence has presented the Nyswander-Dole Award in honor of Dole and Nyswander since 1982 , with Nyswander and Dole as the first recipients. In 1978 both received the National Drug Abuse Conference award .

He was married three times (first marriage divorced in 1963, second marriage since 1965 with Marie Nyswander, from 1992 with Margaret MacMillan Cool) and had three children from his first marriage and four stepchildren. He was a passionate mountaineer.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times
• Obituary in The Independent

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter D. (PDF; 575 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Accessed March 19, 2018 (English).