In 1970 Van
Potter coined the word “bioethics” and defined
this comprehensive field of thought and action. The contributon
of the remarkable life work of this member of the Unitarian
Society of Madison, Wisconsin to the environment of humankind
is described by colleagues of the McArdle Labratory for
Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Van Rensselaer Potter II, age 90, died peacefully Thursday,
Sept. 6, 2001, surrounded by his family at the U.W. Hospital,
after a brief illness. Dr. Potter was a biochemist and original
bioethicist who devoted his entire scientific career to
cancer research, as a professor of Oncology at the McArdle
Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin
in Madison.
Van
and his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
at his 90th birthday party, August 25, 2001
Dr. Potter was
born on August 27, 1911 on the farm his paternal grandparents
had homesteaded in northeastern South Dakota on the edge
of the Coteau des Prairie in 1882. His grandfather died
of cancer at the age of 51, the year before Dr. Potter was
born, and he was given his grandfather's name, Van Rensselaer
Potter. His mother, Eva Herpel Potter, was killed in an
automobile accident when he was seven, and he became very
close to his father. The relationship continued after his
father, Arthur Howard Potter, married Anna Sivertson and
daughters Jean and Ruth Ann were born. Dr. Potter maintained
close and affectionate relationships with his sisters, even
though they and their families were far away in Tacoma,
Washington.
Dr. Potter graduated from the Pierpont High School in 1928
in a class of 12. In the fall he entered South Dakota State
College, with a total of eight hundred dollars contributed
by his two grandmothers. From his sophomore year on he earned
all his expenses and received special recognition from his
professors and his employer, the Head of Experiment Station
Chemistry, Dr. Kurt Walter Franke. Although beginning by
washing rat cages and making up rat diets, he was soon feeding
and weighing the animals and dissecting them when they died
after consuming grain later shown to contain trace amounts
of the element selenium. He was allowed to design and carry
out experiments lasting several months, and to co-author
several papers in the Journal of Nutrition on work
done as an undergraduate.
Potter's
Global Bioethics (Michigan State University Press,
1988). The cover offers a definition of bioethics as
"Biology combined with diverse humanistic knowlege
forging a science that sets a system of medical and
environmental priorities for acceptable survival."
He received his
B.S. degree with High Honors in 1933, majoring in chemistry
and biology. He continued in the Franke laboratory, taking
some courses at the graduate level while seeking a fellowship
to work on a Ph.D. During this period he met and courted
Vivian Christensen, who was an undergraduate at that time.
In February 1935, the big break came with a Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation (WARF) Fellowship in the Department
of Biochemistry, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
with Professor Conrad Elvehjem. With the award of a full-time
teaching assistantship for 1935, Dr. Potter was able to
marry Miss Christensen on August 3rd of the same year.
He receiveda
Ph.D. in Biochemistry with a minor in Medical Physiology
in 1938, he was able to secure a National Research Council
Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Sailing on the Queen Mary in August,
Dr. and Mrs. Potter traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to work
with Professor Hans von Euler in the Biokemiska Institutet.
A second year of work was arranged with Professor Hans Krebs
in England. World War II erupted the day after they arrived
in England, and they were ordered back to the United States.
Finding a haven at the University of Chicago with Professor
Thorfin Hogness, Dr. Potter made contact with Professor
Elvehjem in Madison and interviewed for a position in the
McArdle Laboratory as the only other staff member, along
with Dr. Harold Rusch. Taking residence in February 1940,
Dr. Potter advanced to Full Professor in 1947.
While developing methods for determining the quantity of
a variety of enzymes in transplantable rat liver tumors
derived from some forty different primary tumors produced
by certain chemicals added to the rat diet, he was able
to show that no two of them were alike. While resembling
immature or fetal normal liver in some respects, the tumors
were unable to mature to the normal adult pattern in all
details. This idea of an arrested differentiation was captured
in the phrase "Oncogeny is blocked Ontogeny".
In examining a multiplicity of differences between the experimental
tumors and the corresponding normal tissues, he was led
to express the goal as the separation of significant alterations
from irrelevant changes in terms of the Minimal Deviation
Hypothesis. As it became apparent that cancer develops as
a multi-step process, driven by a combination of gene mutations,
it became clear that the production of several essential
gene changes could not avoid producing a variety of irrelevant
gene mutations.
Van
at the "Stuga", his writing hut and retreat
in the woods.
Although he was
not involved in cancer therapy or the search for new chemotherapy,
his 1951 study of enzyme inhibitors and the quantitative
measurement of enzyme products in the presence and absence
of specific inhibitors led to the demonstration of the effects
of two different inhibitors acting on the same overall system.
It was proposed that combinations of chemotherapeutic agents
be tried. The idea was soon applied to clinical situations,
and the approach is now widespread.
After specializing
in cancer research for 20 years, Dr. Potter entered the
local political scene in 1960 on the side of those who were
activists in the struggle to gain support for the Frank
Lloyd Wright vision of a building on the shores of Lake
Monona, in Madison. He became President of Citizens for
Monona Terrace, and when Otto Festge, a pro-Terrace mayor,
was elected he served on the Mayor's Auditorium Committee.
There he conceived his vision of a Monona Basin Project
coupling the Terrace building with a congruent structure
on the opposite shore. All efforts failed at that time,
but 30 years later the Monona Terrace was approved, built,
and dedicated on July 18, 1997.
At the national level, Dr. Potter was elected President
of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1964, and President
of the American Association for Cancer Research in 1974.
He was elected to membership in the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences,
and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. Throughout his career, he served on committees
and panels for the American Cancer Society and the National
Cancer Institute.
At the international level, Dr. Potter presented lectures
on his research. In addition, he coined the word "bioethics"
in 1970. In 1971 he dedicated his first book on the subject
to Aldo Leopold, a well-known Wisconsin professor who had
much earlier called for a "land ethic". He retired
in 1982 and in 1988 published the book, Global Bioethics,
Building on the Leopold Legacy. Until his death, Dr.
Potter published a series of articles on his vision of bioethics
as a bridge between the sciences and the humanities in the
service of world-wide human health, and a protected environment.
Van's
three-dimensional paper model of the double-helix structure
of DNA from his book Nucleic Acid Outlines, 1960
Environmental Ethics
Did
you know that the US uses over 40% of the health
dollars spent in the entire world? That TB, malaria,
and other diseases related to poverty are on the
rise? That the wealthiest 20% of the world's people
now make roughly over 60 times in income what
the poorest 20% make? That the world's population
is rising at about 80 to 90 million people per
year? That roughly a billion of the world's people
live at a consumption level that is way too much
for the world as a whole to sustain even for the
present population? That the U.S. exports pollutants
and toxic wastes to Third World countries? That
U.S. cigarette companies are among the major exporters
of tobacco to Second and Third World countries
and that the market is growing rapidly? That U.S.-based
private hospital chains are building hospitals
abroad intended to provide care for the wealthy
around the world? That pharmaceutical companies
have little interest in developing treatments
for TB and malaria? That the First World uses
the vast bulk of morphine, although the vast bulk
of suffering and chronic disease is in the Third
World?
By the Environmental Bioethics group
The following poem was presented at the memorial
service for Van Rensselaer Potter held on November 7,
2001. It was writen by his grandson, Josh Simon.
To Save the Earth
Save
the Earth
We must First Love
Respecting Life
and each other
now in the Present
We Exist
for the Future
generations of Humanity
We
must care
We shall
Live on this Earth
We Should Survive
