Dr. William H. Danforth, Chancellor Emeritus of Washington University, was presented with the inaugural Christopher Hobler Spirit of Hope Award at an Evening of Hope, a gala dinner and concert Monday, May 14, 2007 at Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis. The award from Hope Happens honors Dr. Danforth’s support of medical research of neurological diseases.  

Dr. Danforth graciously agreed to share his brief remarks.

As Chancellor of Washington University for 24 years, Dr. Danforth set a new course for the university’s future and completed its transition from a local college to a national research university. He established 70 new faculty chairs, built a $1.72 billion endowment, oversaw funding and construction of many new buildings, and tripled the number of scholarships for students. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Danforth was named Chancellor Emeritus by the Washington University Board of Trustees in 1999.

The award was presented by Jean Hobler, co-founder of Hope Happens. Artist Jesse Vonk, Gala co-chair, designed an award sculpture in the shape of a neuron.

An Evening of Hope - May 14, 2007 

Thanks. Thanks to Jean Hobler and Jesse Vonk. I have many other things for which to be thankful.

I would not be here tonight if medical research had not extended my life. I believed in medical research long before its fruits affected my life directly, but now I have a personal reason to be grateful. And so do many others, probably even most of you in this room. If you wonder about your personal debt to medical science, think about the past.

If you go to an old graveyard, you see the graves of many babies. You do not in modern graveyards. If you go to an old graveyard, you see the graves of many young women who died during the childbearing years. You do not see them any more. When I was an intern during the summer of 1951, I saw the results of a polio epidemic. One of my earliest patients, a young man about my age went into an iron lung, never to come out alive. Young physicians do not see polio any more. And so it goes. I remember exploratory surgery. Now doctors learn more from MRI and CAT scans and PET scans than they ever learned from exploratory surgery. And suffering is way down. When as always happens an illness can no longer be halted, we have hospice care that helps us through our final illness with dignity and greatly diminished suffering.

Comforting the sick and healing the afflicted are among the highest of human callings. Those who do so are honored by every society and every religion. Yet along the way advances in medicine have been opposed for religious and philosophical reasons. About 200 years ago the then president of Yale, an ordained minister, opposed vaccination for small pox, for as he said, “If God since the beginning of time decreed that those children should die, man should not intervene.” In the 19th century good people in St. Louis opposed human dissection. Closer to our own time we have seen strong and principled opposition to animal experimentation, blood transfusions, organ transplantation, vaccination to prevent cervical cancer, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research. Certainly, if the past predicts the future, good people will continue to oppose future advances. But, again if the past predicts the future, we will see the advances gradually accepted as a boon and blessing for humankind.

Advances in the last fifty years have been especially spectacular. And science continues to advance at a seemingly ever faster rate. Scientists have new tools and new possibilities for addressing the suffering and premature deaths caused by disease. And that is why we are all here tonight.

This effort was the vision of Chris Hobler, who died tragically and bravely of ALS. His family has carried forward his dream and his hope that through research ALS might be prevented or cured so that others will not share his fate. Chris’s cause is noble and one properly associated with the word “Hope.”

But science keeps shedding new light on old problems. It turns out that ALS is now seen as one of a family of diseases, sometimes called neurodegenerative diseases. They include multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. That new understanding changes the approach. Now makes sense for more scientists and physicians to come together around common central facilities and databases for a family of diseases rather than a single disease. They can draw more effectively from advances in more fields such as genetics and immunology.

To make the most of this opportunity Hope Happens has partnered with Washington University first to build and now to strengthen the Hope Center that will concentrate on these diseases. The Hope Center puts together the right world leading scientists, with the right vision, and the right infrastructure to mount an attack on these crippling diseases. The challenge for us all is to join the Hope Center in the pursuit of this noble cause. My dream is that those who come after us will bless us for this undertaking just as we can bless those who made it possible for most of us to be here tonight.

Copyright 2007 William Danforth.  Reproduced by permission of the author.