Episode 1: Who is Bernie Fisher?

Our story begins exactly fifty years ago. On a fall weekend in late September 1974, a former dancer from Michigan and a young surgeon from Pittsburgh met just outside Washington, DC. The treatment of breast cancer would never be the same.

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Pictures:

Dr. Bernard Fisher. Source: The NIH Record, “NCI Breast Cancer Task Force Raises Questions on Surgical Treatment". October 8, 1974.

President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford read a petition signed by all 100 members of United States Senate, in the President's Suite at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD, following the First Lady's breast cancer surgery. October 2, 1974. Source: National Archives and Records Administration.

2324 Sherbrook Street, Pittsburgh, PA. Photo credit: Stacy Wentworth

And one video: Breast Cancer in the White House is a panel discussion moderated by NIH director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli and me.

Keep Reading:

Links:

Breast Cancer Report to the Profession Suddenly Is a Report to the Nation, The Cancer Letter, October 4, 1974

The “Betty Blip”

Tablet Magazine’s Gatecrashers podcast

Famous People from Pittsburgh

Transcript of Episode 1 available here.

Sources:

Gerald Ford Remarks on Signing Proclamation Granting Pardon to Nixon (September 8. 1974)

First Lady Betty Ford’s Press Conference (September 4, 1974)

First Lady Betty Ford’s Remarks to the American Cancer Society (November 7, 1975)

Dr. Bernard Fisher, National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Grand Rounds, Great Teachers: Breast Cancer Research and Treatment: In Transit (September 8, 2004)

Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, Dr. Bernard Fisher (March 29, 2015)

The MacNeil Lehrer Report, Episode 219, Mastectomies (May 31, 1977)

ABC World News Tonight (March 29, 1994)

Bernard Fisher Interview, National Council of Jewish Women- Pittsburgh Section Oral History (1981)

Bernard Fisher Interview, American Association for Cancer Research (April 4, 2011)

Steel City Jews: A History of Pittsburgh and Its Jewish Community. A presentation by Dr. Barbara Burstin. Squirrel Hill Historical Society (December 8, 2009)

Biography of Betty Ford

Twenty-Five Year Follow Up of a Randomized Trial Comparing Radical Mastectomy, Total Mastectomy, and Total Mastectomy Followed by Irradiation. New England Journal of Medicine 2002;347:567-75

When Yale Buildings Speak. Yale Alumni Magazine. Jan/Feb 2024

Racial Quotas Have an Ugly Pedigree. California Shouldn’t Try to Bring Them Back. San Francisco Chronicle. September 16, 2020

A special treat for those who made it to the end…

Shark Tank superstar, entrepreneur and former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban spent his early childhood in Squirrel Hill…. just a few blocks from Bernie’s house.

In this interview, Cuban shares his memories from Pittsburgh including his mom’s recipe for Classic Noodle Kugel. Did you know he is a vegetarian like me?