{"id":24521,"date":"2022-04-10T16:24:59","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T21:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24521"},"modified":"2022-04-10T16:24:59","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T21:24:59","slug":"obit-watch-april-10-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24521","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: April 10, 2022."},"content":{"rendered":"

Henry Patterson<\/a> has passed away at the age of 92.<\/p>\n

You probably know him better as the guy who wrote under the pseudonym “Jack Higgins”<\/a>. (He had others as well, but I think that was his best known.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not pretending I\u2019m Charles Dickens or anything,\u201d he said in the 2000 interview with the Belfast newspaper. \u201cBut whatever I do, whatever it is that makes up a \u2018Jack Higgins\u2019 book, it\u2019s not like what anyone else does.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Arthur D. Riggs<\/a>, big damn hero.<\/p>\n

He is probably best known for his role in the invention of artificial insulin. Working alongside Keiichi Itakura and Herbert Boyer, he developed a way to use recombinant DNA technology \u2014 essentially, the ability to splice together strands of DNA \u2014 to turn E. coli into microscopic factories for the production of humanized hormones.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

Dr. Boyer and another researcher, Stanley Cohen, had already developed the basic technology behind recombinant DNA. Dr. Riggs\u2019s insight was to see how that technology could be used to tweak bacteria to produce artificial hormones for human use.<\/a>
\n\u201cWe chose insulin because it looked doable, and there was a need,\u201d he told The Los Angeles Business Journal in 2021. \u201cAt the time, diabetics were being treated with cow insulin because there was no source of human insulin. And cow insulin resulted in a high rate of allergic reactions.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

The discovery made Genentech, and Dr. Riggs, rich. But unlike many of his fellow biotech pioneers, he declined the opportunity to make even more money working in the for-profit sector; he was under contract to Genentech, but after that arrangement ended in 1984, he returned to City of Hope full time.<\/a>
\nHe lived in the same house for 50 years and rarely sat for interviews. He gave most of his money away in the form of anonymous donations to City of Hope. His beneficence, to the tune of $210 million, was finally revealed last year, when he made an additional $100 million donation to the hospital.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

Dr. Riggs later developed the foundations for monoclonal antibodies, again using recombinant DNA technology to trick bacteria into producing proteins that mimic human antibodies. That development has led to major advances in treating cancer and other diseases.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry Patterson has passed away at the age of 92. You probably know him better as the guy who wrote under the pseudonym “Jack Higgins”. (He had others as well, but I think that was his best known.) \u201cI\u2019m not pretending I\u2019m Charles Dickens or anything,\u201d he said in the 2000 interview with the Belfast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,16,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-obits","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24521"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24524,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24521\/revisions\/24524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}