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My dad was an immunologist. By all accounts he was absolutely brilliant. I lost him the day after my 9th birthday in 1982. I grew up with a series of George
by Steeeve 10y ago
My dad was an immunologist.
By all accounts he was absolutely brilliant. I lost him the day after my 9th birthday in 1982. I grew up with a series of George Washington Cherry Tree kind of stories about him permeating everything.
There's a lot of pressure growing up being the only son of a very accomplished person - having the responsibility of filling shoes that just can't be filled. It got to the point where I started being skeptical. Nature of being a teen/young adult I suppose. In the mid-90's I was having a conversation with my Uncle and he tells me how before he died, my Dad was hell-bent on the Nobel prize. He was going to win it by curing cancer. He told me "the key is in the T-cells. He was always 20 years ahead of his time." I took it with a grain of salt at the time. Another tall tale.
Some years later in 2002 I'm reading an article and lo and behold there's promising research coming around that T-Cell treatment is yielding positive research in cancer. And now I read this article, scroll down a little, and there's a diagram highlighting the T-Cell.
A few years after that I end up working at Stanford and that gave me access to old news articles that aren't up on the web, and a lot of scholarly things that aren't typically in search engine results. I was absolutely floored to discover that the tall tales weren't tall tales at all. They were just stories from people who were honestly proud of him and what he did (even if they didn't understand most of it). I tracked down a few of his colleagues and I'll tell you - it was pretty powerful hearing from some very accomplished people about the work that he did and the kind of man he was.
When you think about it, there has been more progress in medicine in the last 80 years than in the previous 800. It's pretty stinking amazing if you ask me. And most of it has been made by people who's names you'll never hear or read about.
This article brought a lot of memories back to me so I thought I'd share. Miss you dad.
- mailshanx 10y agoWhat's your dad's name? Do you have any material we can read?
- Steeeve 10y agoSteven Bix Kallestad - here's a blurb from early on when he developed a Hepatitis test: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19701221&id=CVszAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iDIHAAAAIBAJ&pg=3326,7065893 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19701221&id=... Here's an article about his baboons escaping: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1798&dat=19660131&id=4PUeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AIwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1941,4002263 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1798&dat=19660131&id=... (he rescued them from a research facility, they lived in his bathroom while he was at work, they escaped and lived in the trees outside for a few days) His public (amex) company getting sold to a private entity shortly after he died: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/03/business/company-news-kallestad-labs-to-be-acquired.html http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/03/business/company-news-kall... (edited because I originally linked to a consecutive sale) His products still on the market: http://www.bio-rad.com/evportal/evolutionPortal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=search_page&sfMode=search&sfStartNumber=1&clearQR=true&js=1&searchString=kallestad&database=productskus+productcategories+productdetails+abdProductDetails+msds+literatures+inserts+faqs+downloads+webpages+assays+genes+pathways+plates+promotions&tabName=DIVISIONNAME http://www.bio-rad.com/evportal/evolutionPortal.portal?_nfpb... And by the way... his patent on the mouth guard (he was a hockey player and one day decided people shouldn't lose so many teeth so he put this together with a friend) http://patents.justia.com/patent/3943924 http://patents.justia.com/patent/3943924 There's a whole world of things that he did and obviously there were a lot of other scientists involved, but suffice it to say that he had a hand in many advancements that are taken for granted today like STD tests and treatments, pregnancy tests, etc. He helped develop and improved a lot of equipment as well. A lot of the links I can find right now mention Kallestad products used in research like immunoassays, HGH, nephelometers, etc, but honestly it gets above my comprehension level pretty quickly. I can point to "page 273 of x research article where it mentions a specific product/patent/procedure that the research relied on, but it's not all that interesting if you aren't in the field (I don't think). My favorite story about him is about an aligator named Zago. My Uncle lived in Florida and decided on a whim to send my dad a live alligator. My dad, being a scientist and used to receiving shipments of animal based serums saw the label on the box and put it in the refrigerator. Days later, my Uncle called and asked him how he liked the new pet. He ran to the refrigerator and it was still alive and kicking. He kept it in the bathtub for a few years until it got too big and donated it to a zoo.
- mailshanx 10y agoThat's a really cool story, thanks for sharing! Your dad has such a large and wide body of work that lives on even today. That's really amazing.