Menard Gertler
Year: October 11th, 2007
Location: New York, NY
Interviewed by: Blackburn, Henry
Abstract
Menard Gertler is a pioneer in CVD epidemiology from his involvement with one of the early case-control studies, Coronary Disease in the Young, which he managed and analyzed in collaboration with Paul White, Boston cardiologist, and Stanley Garn, anthropologist. He was responsible for putting it on a firm basis for data collection, for collecting the control subjects, and for probably the earliest development of multivariate regression for prediction. He also reviewed the field, analyzed others’ contributions, and converted the study into a 25-year prospective one, all published in classic monographs referenced below.
The interview ranges over that study and his excitement and involvement in early CVD epidemiology. It descends into some regrets for having to give up his Boston career and move to New York and his perceived losses from that career change. It ends with his current enthusiasm for his work at a cellular and chemical level on the causes of vulnerability of the atheroma. He maintains, at age 87, an active laboratory at Cornell, and administers a foundation in honor of his family and benefactors. (Henry Blackburn)
Quotes
MG: First of all, I thought a human study should have controls. And we saw the thing veering, it was the mesomorphy thing, and I said, “Let’s get moving on the controls.” We did. We got them at random. Stanley had a lot of concepts on the basic structure of human beings – endomorph, mesomorph, and he found that.
HB: Okay, and then you got matched controls because you were worried about selection and the matched controls were not as different as the casual controls and so you began to think of perhaps everybody being vulnerable in our culture. That was an advanced concept for the time. And then you put it all together in predictive equations.
Max Woodbury
MG: Max was a mathematician for the Space Department. And this is why I got him. He could give you a formula for multiple variables. The JAMA article, I’ll send it to you. It has everything in it.
HB: Okay. But you said something about computers back at that time. I didn’t know there were any computers. Did Max have a special…Did Max make them himself or were…
MG: Well, he was with the Space Department so they had the first ones…
HB: The government Space Agency? NASA?
MG: Yes. Sure.
HB: Okay. So he had access to their computers. Got it.
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