THE EXCITING DIVERSE LIFE OF A physician SCIENTIST WHO MERGED RESEARCH, MEDICINE, TRAVELS TO EXOTIC PLACES, FUN, SEX, HARDSHIP AND TRIUMPHS DISCOVERING NEW TREATMENTS TO CHALLENGE INCURABLE DISEASES SUCH AS ALS, ALZHEIMER¨S, PARKINSON, MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS, AUTISM, BRAIN DAMAGE, DIABETES, COPD, BLINDNESS, TAY-SACHS, HUNTINGTON, KIDNEY DISEASE. EXCITING ADVENTURES IN SCIENCE AND LIFE. Stem Cells and Sex Wars CHALLENGING THE INCURABLE By Burton Feinerman AuthorHouse Copyright © 2013 Burton Feinerman, M.D. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4817-7478-9 CHAPTER 1 The Story of Me and Stem Cells THE EARLY YEARS * * * I thought where do I start? My pathway to the world ofstem cells has to be traced to the time I was twelve yearsold. At that time I was captain of the baseball team of PublicSchool #92 in Brooklyn, New York and my goal was tobecome the shortstop of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was duringthat period that I met a fellow classmate whose name wasHans Mark. He had been born in Mannheim, Germany andhis father Dr. Herman Mark was a renown scientist for I.G.Farben. As the Nazis took a stronghold on Germany in the1930s the Mark family fled to Vienna, Austria. Dr. HermanMark again took a prestigious scientific position only to beagain faced with the Nazi "Anschluss" takeover of Austria. Shortly afterwards Dr. Mark was imprisoned by theGermans for six months. His liberal views and the fact thatone of his grandfathers was Jewish probably were the causeof his arrest. His wife appealed to the Catholic church forassistance but to no avail. While in prison one of Dr. Mark'sjailors turned out to be a person whom he had played a lotof soccer with. This association along with lots of cash thatwas gathered up by his wife to bribe the jailor he managed tofind freedom. In the late hours under cover of nightfall, allof the Mark family fled pretending they were on their way toSwitzerland for a skiing trip. From there they made their wayto London (where they lived during the Battle of Britain andthe bombing of London), Canada (where Dr. Herman Marktook a position at a paper company) and eventually New York(where Dr. Herman continued his polymer research at theBrooklyn Polytechnic Institute). Dr. Herman Mark got the nickname "Der Geheimrat"from his colleague Isador Fankuchen which literally meantprivy or secret councilor, or "stuffed shirt." Fankuchen meantthis as a joke but somehow the name stuck but it was theantithesis of Mark, who had a self deprecating sense of humor,was unassuming in nature yet was pleased by the title. HermanMark was hardly a Geheimrat, being European Viennese tothe core, kissing lady's hands, melded Old World with NewWorld ways, had an openness to people, places and ideas andtransformed into American ways. He would interact well withhis students; had a total lack of pomposity offering warmgreetings to people of all walks of life, rich, poor, educated,non-educated saying good morning to all with a big smileand calling many people "Professor" even when they had nosuch title to give the stranger some sense of importance. Itwas shortly after the Marks moved to New York that that Imet Hans Mark who was also twelve years at the time. Heintroduced me to the world of science and especially organicchemistry. The Mark family lived in a very large apartmentoverlooking the beautiful Prospect Park of Brooklyn. A steep stairway from the apartment led to a large roomabove that served as our mutual chemistry laboratory. It wasthere that we probed into the molecular structure of organicmolecules and developed a new plastic. We had isolated theprotein casein from milk and then added barium sulfate thatformed a solid plastic. We entered at the time our work to acompetition for young people in science called the GilbertScience Prize. Much to our amazement we won first prizeand suddenly we were famous with our pictures all over thenewspapers. No longer was I a baseball player but instead afuture scientist. During our relaxing hours we played a "war game" thatHans had created. It consisted of hundreds of pieces of hardcardboard battleships, destroyers, tanks, soldiers, large islandsthat were placed all over the Marks family apartment to thedistress of his mother. The game went for on for at least aweek to the further concern of Hans' mother. All of thisrather ironic since Hans went on to become the acting headof the Neutron Physics Group for Nuclear Science at MIT;later Professor of Physics; Chairman of Nuclear Engineeringand Administration of Berkeley Research Reactor; Directorof NASA Ames Research Center; appointed Administratorof NASA by President Reagan; Chancellor of the Universityof Texas from 1984 to 1992; Secretary of the Air Force underPresident Carter; Executive Director of NASA; Professor ofAerospace Engineering at the University of Texas; DirectorDefense Research and Engineering under President Clinton;now continues to teach aerospace engineering and a spaceflight course at the University of Texas