Interview with Henry Buchwald

Abstract

Dr. Henry Buchwald begins his interview talking about his early life: fleeing Austria in the midst of the Holocaust, growing up in New York, and his baccalaureate and medical education at Columbia. He discusses how he arrived at an interest in medicine, his time in the Air Force, and his reasons for choosing to pursue a residency at the University of Minnesota. As part of his time at Minnesota, Dr. Buchwald compares the University’s research program with those of other medical schools, relates the profound influence of Owen Wangensteen on the Surgery Department, and discusses his early lab work and his studies of biochemistry, particularly lipids, with Ivan Frantz. In reviewing his changing research interests, Dr. Buchwald cites major diseases afflicting society at various times during his career: the increasing association of cholesterol with heart disease prompted his early interest in lipid uptake and spurred his work on the Program on Surgical Control of Hyperlipidemias (POSCH); the need for treatments for diabetes prompted his research into Infusaid, the first implantable infusion pump, a collaborative effort that led to the development of several other devices and eventually the establishment of a bioengineering program at the University; and finally, the ongoing obesity epidemic spurred Dr. Buchwald’s current research into the jejunoileal bypass for the treatment of obesity. In his reflections on obesity research, Dr. Buchwald discusses the high level of stigmatism associated with the disease and the difficulty of funding research into its treatment.