Скачать или смотреть Spy Profile: Dr. Buck Guthrie on Public Health & Talbot Hospice

Dr. Guthrie, as many of you know, was a co-founder of the Talbot Hospice Foundation more than 30 years ago and continues to serve the Foundation as a Board Member "Emeritus".

Betts also was actively involved with Hospice from the beginning. There were no paid staff at that time and she coordinated the 100-percent volunteer effort. They invited friends and neighbors to join in the task of building what is so successful today.

The long road to the local Hospice' success began when Dr. Guthrie chose the public health service over clinical work. He reached that decision following studies at Haverford, Duke, University of North Carolina and medical school at George Washington University. He acquired his Masters in Public Health from the University of Michigan and completed his residency in California. It was there that Buck and Betts met and best-friended Dr. Davey, a gentleman who shaped their thinking as well as many others' thinking.

Dr. Guthrie entered the Navy as a US Public Health Service (USPHS) Captain and retired as a Rear Admiral.

He developed an interest in chronic disease while at the USPHS and headed a department there dealing with the prevention and control of it. He worked on controlling Polio, came to know Dr. Salk and was involved in the development of the Iron Lung to ease the breathing of those inflicted by the disease.

The highlight of his career was to create and manage the Public Health Service's anti- smoking campaign. His studies indicated that addiction was the problem and it would have a major impact on our nation's overall public health. He took on the major advocates of smoking, the tobacco companies and the advertising industry, in an attempt to educate the public as to the hazards of smoking based on the use of nicotine.

He personally had stopped smoking a pack a day, prior to the campaign, once he understood the danger. However, Betts was slower to take the same action but eventually followed Bucks advice. Dr. Guthrie remembers having to regularly remind Dr. Luther Terry, US Surgeon General, not to smoke in public during the anti smoking campaign.

President Lyndon Johnson and Surgeon General Luther Terry joined Dr. Guthrie in the public crusade against smoking once they saw the overwhelming evidence produced by Dr. Guthrie's scientific work. The pressure, of course, was intense but Dr, Guthrie held his position because he knew that it was based on sound scientific evidence. He commented, however, that the pro-smoking supporters never made the issue personal against him, but rather stuck to attacking the facts as they saw them.

As a result of his work, the Surgeon General assigned Dr. Guthrie to be staff director of the Advisory Committee on Smoking & Health. The assignment ended with the non-famous "Surgeon General's Advisory committee's Report on Smoking & Health" in 1964. It earned Dr. Guthrie the PHS Meritorious Service Award as well as being recognized by the Associated Press Annual Poll as 1964's "Newsmaker of the Year in Science".