The Bio-Sphere
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Tom McCutchan was raised in Aledo, Ill, a rural farm community near the Mississippi River. While in high school he held part-time and summer jobs. He unloaded tomatoes for Heinz, detasseled corn, washed dishes at a lunch counter, performed janitorial services, was an orderly in a mental institution and a lifeguard. Despite a genuine effort, he did not excel in any of these positions. Everyone agreed that his best hope would be to seek higher education. He went on to receive bachelors of arts from DePauw University and a Ph.D from Purdue University. At the latter, he studied the chemistry of biological molecules, which was to become an area of considerable scientific interest. He received a fellowship to continue those studies at Yale University, where new techniques for molecular cloning and gene sequencing were being developed. In 1976, he was offered a position at the National Cancer Institute to work on viruses that were able to transmit tumors. In 1980, he was given the opportunity to direct a major laboratory at the National Institutes Health. During his 30 years at the NIH he became an associate editor of a genetics journal and was on the editorial board of two other scientific publications. In addition, he wrote and published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2005 to study the parasitic infections of endangered species in South Africa, and an Orise Fellowship in 2010 from Oakridge Laboratories to develop diagnostics for newly emerging diseases in the U.S. He is now, at least temporarily, retired and living in Union.
Additional Column Posts (1 - 8 of 8)
Rachel, we hardly knew ye, or even bothered to read your book
By Tom McCutchan - Mar 01DDT once promised unparalleled benefits to humanity and especially to inhabitants of the developing world. Its insecticidal properties had the ...
CWD: Mad Cow Disease in deer?
By Tom McCutchan - Jan 26If you’ve ever heard the word “prion,” it was probably in reports about Mad Cow Disease during the 1990s. Mad Cow Disease was caused by a type of ...
Keys to successful biotechnology: Good science isn’t enough
By Tom McCutchan - Jan 12The world-renowned Jackson Laboratories In Bar Harbor, should, by all rights, have failed within its first few years. Although it had the financial...
Where does the flu come from and why won't it go away?
By Tom McCutchan - Dec 15Over 60 percent of the infectious diseases that affect mankind were transmitted to humans from nonhumans. We constantly come into contact with ...
Bird Flu, Mad Cow, Monkey malaria: What’s next?
By Tom McCutchan - Feb 23Many emerging diseases of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are caused by pathogens that originally infected only animals. We usually explain ...
Bioterrorism: One flu over the New York Times
By Tom McCutchan - Jan 19I've suffered through many catastrophes in my life. Only a few of them actually happened. — Mark Twain There have been numerous reports in news ...
The need to produce more pneumonia vaccine
By Tom McCutchan - Jan 05Could a deadly pandemic like the Spanish flu of 1918 catch us unprepared? The 1918 flu killed tens of millions of people in less than a year, and ...
Herd immunity
By Tom McCutchan - Dec 02I just got my flu shot. I know the official flu season started two months ago and that it will be, at best, three weeks before the vaccination ...