ABSTRACT
Sphingomyelin Pathway................................................................................ 143 11.4 Evidence for Receptor-Mediated Sphingomyelinase Activation .................. 151 11.5 Perspective .................................................................................................... 152 References .............................................................................................................. 153
My journey to the laboratory and into the realm of lipid biochemistry was unconventional. In fact, I had no intention of becoming a scientist, and certainly not of studying lipids in an academic setting. After medical school at the University of Chicago, I returned to my beloved city, New York, and specifically to the borough in which I was born, the Bronx. My internship and residency in medicine at Montefiore Hospital were simultaneously exhilarating and wearying. A unique aspect of the training in the Montefiore program was the requirement for a senior “thesis” talk. Although this was for the most part a pro forma obligation, I never shunned the challenge of a good intellectual workout and this was no different. At that time, there was a well-known clinician at Montefiore named Harold Rifkin, a diabetes specialist who had written a clinical tome of great merit. He was well respected as a “great old man of medicine,” although he probably wasn’t that old-I was just pretty young (26 years old). I asked him if he would serve as my adviser, to which he agreed, on a project involving new insulins that were just becoming available at that time. The older insulins, and this was before molecular biology took hold, were purified either from cows or pigs, and invariably had some levels of contaminating proteins in the mix (1). Some patients responded to these insulins with either local or systemic allergic reactions, and hence the newer, purer monocomponent insulins were causing a stir (2,3). I was fascinated by the problem and began contacting the clinician scientists around the country who had published the primary work on these
new insulins, most of whom were more than happy to send me reprints, unpublished experimental data, and even a few samples of the new products.
