doi: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.108.174078
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.
In Memoriam |
Basil Rifkind
Correspondence to David J. Gordon, MD, PhD, MPH, Bethesda, MD. E-mail d.j.gordon@verizon.net
An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract. |
Dr Basil M. Rifkind, longtime chief of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Lipid Metabolism Branch and director of the Lipid Research Clinics (LRC) Program, died on June 22, 2008 at age 73. He had Parkinson’s disease.
Basil grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of working class Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. He graduated first in his class at Glasgow University and, apart from one year as an NHLBI fellow, practiced internal medicine at Glasgow Royal Infirmary from 1960 to 1971. In 1971, Basil returned to NHLBI as a medical officer under Dr Robert Levy in the Lipid Metabolism Branch and, when Dr Levy became NHLBI Director, Basil replaced him as Branch Chief and project officer of the nascent LRC program, an ambitious multidisciplinary amalgam of basic and population research in lipid metabolism. At its core was the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (CPPT), a 4000-patient randomized trial to test the "cholesterol hypothesis" that lowering high cholesterol could prevent clinical events in middle-aged men without prior clinical coronary disease.
Basil’s passion was to foster research in cholesterol metabolism and to bring that research to bear on public policy. Thus, his leadership role in the LRC program fit him like a glove. He subordinated his personal ambitions and ego to the success of this program and worked tirelessly on its behalf. Among a roster of LRC investigators that was a "Who’s Who" of the best and brightest in the field of lipid research, Basil was its heart and soul.
After the