by John Bach
photo/Lisa Ventre
"The medical profession has a responsibility not only for the cure of the sick and for the prevention of disease but for the advancement of knowledge upon which both depend." — Dr. Robert McCance, 1950

Dr. Albert Sabin shared his colleague's approach to research when he developed the oral polio vaccine while on faculty at UC's College of Medicine and staff of Children's Hospital. His dogged pursuit of discovery virtually wiped out the disease that once crippled and killed millions of children worldwide. Sabin's legacy at the College of Medicine today is as real as Sabin Way, the road on which many UC scientists travel to get to their labs.

Walking in Sabin's footsteps, both literally and figuratively, is Dr. Jeff Whitsett, a UC faculty member and researcher at Children's. Whitsett, an icon in pulmonary medicine and neonatology, recently discovered a gene linked to a rare lung disease in adults and infants. He first gained international attention, however, when he helped develop a drug called Survanta, which lubricates premature infants' lungs, keeping them from sticking together and collapsing. Survanta, often the difference between life and death for preemies, has been used to treat nearly a half million infants since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1991.

Jim Feuer, Ed '78, knows intimately the value of Whitsett's work. When Feuer's 8-year-old son Benjamin was born, his lungs had not fully developed. Though twin brother Aaron went home after a week, Ben was placed on a ventilator and kept in the intensive care unit the first five weeks of his life.

"He was working too hard to breathe," Feuer recalled of his 5-pound, 8-ounce child. "The doctors tried other drugs, but he didn't do well. The next day they put him on Survanta. We don't know that he would not have lived without it, but it really speeded up his lung maturity and enabled him to get off the ventilator."

As public relations director at Children's, Feuer has had the rare opportunity to meet the scientist behind the life-giving science. "It is really neat to be able to go up to Dr. Whitsett and thank him for the work he has done," Feuer says. "Ben has been incredibly healthy ever since. His lungs are fine."

The methods of discovery have evolved enormously since Sabin peered into his microscope here four decades ago and even since Whitsett broke through. But the desire to unravel nature's secrets to help people like Benjamin remains. Today's researchers are simply getting a closer look at the human body.

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