Dean-Elect Plans Stronger Research-Medicine Links

Dr. Gerard Noel Burrow, the endocrinologist chosen by UC San Diego as the next dean of the School of Medicine, said Tuesday that he hopes to devote much of his energy at the university to strengthening the links between basic research and practical medicine.

Predicting that recent advances in molecular biology and recombinant DNA techniques are on the verge of transforming clinical medicine, Burrow said UCSD’s leadership in the field leaves the university “uniquely positioned to take advantage of that.”

“One of my real interests is building that bridge so that one goes from the laboratory bench to the bedside, then taking clinical problems back to the bench,” said Burrow, who is 54. He said he intends to make easier “that back and forth flow between basic science and the clinician.”

Chief of Medicine at University of Toronto

Burrow, who is chief of medicine at the University of Toronto and has spent a quarter of a century studying the thyroid gland, accepted UCSD’s offer last week to fill the position vacated one year ago by Dr. Robert Petersdorf.

The appointment must still be approved by the University of California Board of Regents, which is expected to meet on the matter in November. Burrow, who is originally from Boston, said he expects to begin work in March.

“I think it’s very important to educate a cadre of individuals who are comfortable in both worlds (of basic science and clinical medicine),” Burrow said in a telephone interview Tuesday from his office in Toronto.

“There is a lot being written about whether there is any need for the clinician-scientists . . . who can work both in the laboratory and at the bedside,” he said. “I think they still exist, and I think there are individuals who can speak to both worlds.”

Burrow, who has worked in Canada since 1976, said he is also interested in teaching some of the lessons of Canadian health care to the United States, and in fostering relations between UCSD’s scientists and those working in other Pacific Rim countries, such as Japan and China.

He also hopes to continue his support for cultural activities such as ballet. Burrow is on the board and in charge of fund-raising for the National Ballet of Canada--an extracurricular activity he says he took up when he “got a little tired of simply talking to doctors.”

Likes Form With Music

“I like form. I like sculpture. I like music, but I like form with my music,” Burrow said, when asked what drew him to ballet. “I think ballet really represented a whole coming together of interests.”

Burrow was born in Boston, received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and his medical degree from Yale School of Medicine. After his internship at Yale, he spent two years in Japan as part of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.

The commission, set up by the National Institutes of Health in cooperation with the Japanese, was studying the health effects of the bomb. Burrow and another physician studied the growth and development of a group of children born in the months following the blast.

“It was a collaboration that started with enemies and has persisted,” said Burrow, who remains peripherally involved in the work and revisited the area two years ago. The collaboration “hopefully is an experiment which will never be repeated, and which deserves to be studied,” he said.

Suffered Retardation

Burrow’s group concluded that the children who had received the heaviest doses of radiation--whose mothers had been closest to the bomb--had suffered some growth and developmental retardation evident 15 years later, he said.

Burrow returned to New Haven, Conn., and completed his medical residency at Yale--following in the footsteps of Petersdorf, who had been chief resident at Yale in Burrow’s fourth year. At 33, he was appointed to the faculty as an assistant professor in endocrinology.

Interested in protein synthesis and hormone action, Burrow had started out working on the adrenal gland. But when he found himself taking care of a family with severe mental retardation and cretinism due to thyroid dysfunction, his interest shifted.

Over the last quarter century, Burrow and others have explored the question of what causes such thyroid problems. Although the question remains unanswered, he said he is optimistic that advances in molecular biology may make it possible to define the specific defect.

Co-Edited Definitive Text

Burrow has also specialized in treating thyroid problems in pregnant women and medical complications of pregnancy. He and Dr. Thomas Ferris, now at the University of Minnesota, co-edited the definitive text on the subject, “Medical Complications of Pregnancy.”

In 1976, Burrow became head of endocrinology at the University of Toronto and five years later, chairman of the Department of Medicine--a sprawling empire the size of a small medical school, with 600 faculty members, nine hospitals, 1,515 beds and 260 residents and interns.

During that time, Burrow began his work with the ballet and cultivated other interests, including squash, tennis, skiing and sailing--hobbies, he mused, that perhaps made him afraid to move to Southern California earlier for fear that he would abandon all work.

Burrow is also a collector of medical prints and satirical graphics about medicine.

Name Was Submitted

Last May, Burrow said, he mentioned to a colleague at UCSD that his position of department chairman was scheduled to end in 1991. The colleague mentioned that UCSD was looking for a dean, and somehow, Burrow said, his name was submitted.

“I have been enormously impressed by UCSD,” Burrow said. “I think in a short period of time it’s made itself a major force in North American medicine. . . . It really has a national and international reputation as a first-rate medical school doing world-class research.”

Among his other plans, Burrow said, he hopes to impress upon San Diego “what a treasure it has in its medical school.”

“In terms of support, it’s terribly important that the city have a vested interest in the success of the medical school,” he said. “I think, in very large measure, a medical school sets the standards for medical practice in the larger community.”